


Under My Skin

by Vixx2pointOh



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternative Universe - No Arrow, Alternative Universe - No Island, Bring tissues, Car Sex, F/M, Felicity has a Potty Mouth, First Meetings, Google Maps is MVP, Loads of Swearies, Oliver's Leather Jacket, Omnipresent POV, Past Rape/Non-con, Protective Oliver, Retelling of Assault, Road Trip, Sassy Felicity with a side of Attitude, Sexy Times, She Jumped. He Caught Her., age gap, brooding oliver, dark themes, nature sex, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-06-08 17:47:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 78,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6866830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity Smoak (Kuttler) is a rich runaway with a decidedly large chip on her shoulder.<br/>Oliver Queen is the brooding bounty hunter sent to collect her.</p><p>As they travel across the country they find themselves on corresponding journeys they never knew they needed to take, searching for things they never knew they needed to have.</p><p>*Completed*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Florida

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes:
> 
> While the story takes place in 'present day', it is set back a few years. This should become clear given their relative ages (DOBs and names are the only consistencies between Arrow and this AU, everything else is open to change).
> 
> The title of this fic is derived from the very 80s song 'Poison' by Alice Cooper.
> 
> I have become best friends with Google Maps, but even the best of friends get things wrong sometimes, please excuse any errors I may make.
> 
> I'm not American, I will always spell it 'colour' - enjoy the change.
> 
> Special thanks to my BFFs for reading this for me (I would insert a honey pot emoji and a yellow heart here if I could).

* * *

 

Oliver breathed in the sick and heavy scent of old spilled beer and spent cigarettes. _Mermaids_ – this was his stop in the backstreets of Jacksonville, Florida, where the haze of the pink lights barely gave the patrons away. The carpet was a thick red colour, the chairs and tables a flash of white that reflected the pink lights. It was nothing more than a dive masquerading as something a little classier – but failing terribly in his opinion.

He ordered a nothing from the bar, but slid a photo across the table. The bartender – a thin set man, weedy even, in his late 20s but aging as though he was closer to 40 – gestured his head towards the end of the room.

Oliver nodded and slid a hundred dollar note across the bar as he collected the photo.

The music was loud, almost deafening, the mix of heavy metal from a bygone era made Oliver suspect the owner of this establishment was probably in his 50s with a pony tail and a penchant for wearing dirty white singlets.

He pulled back the thick red velvet curtain of a small cubical in the back of the room. He looked around the musky surroundings, a leather chair that had seen better days – and probably too many bare asses – sat in one corner, an uncomfortable looking bench couch was pushed against a wall – in a fabric that matched the curtain now behind him, this wasn’t the worst place he had found himself, but it sure as hell wasn’t the Hilton.

Neither the chair nor the couch looked like good places to sit, so he opted instead to perch against a small coffee table that stood next to the chair. He stretched his legs – he had spent days driving down here and they were beginning to rebel – folded his arms over each other across his muscular chest, the brown leather jacket flexing against his strain, and he waited.

It was almost 10 minutes before he saw the wave of the red curtain. Stiletto heels poked through underneath the curtain, black – probably at least 8 inches tall.

The curtain folded back and a young girl stepped in. Her face was heavy with makeup – thick black smoky eyes didn’t disguise the blueness of her iris, a deep pink lipstick sat heavy on her lush pouted lips, a sweep of pink across her cheekbones attempting to put colour against her porcelain skin. Her hair was long, an ombre of pinks and purples – that was something he wasn’t expecting, but he would admit it gave her a spark.

She wasn’t tall, probably 5’4 – but with the shoes she was wearing she would stand much closer to his own impressive height. She adjusted the black fishnet stockings that were pulled up with black lace and satin suspenders. She had no pants on to speak of, just very short, very tight, black booty shorts that frilled at the back, not in the least bit containing her pert ass.

The top half was more moderately covered, a black bra under a black mesh t-shirt. All things considered, despite her best efforts to look different, she was most definitely the girl he was after.

She looked nervous, hovering uncomfortably close to the curtain. He imagined she was new to this, she didn’t have the steely look of someone who had already been taken by this life.

He watched her swallow down her nerves and force a smile as she walked towards him, one eye slightly raised.

“So you want a private dance,” she nervously ran a finger across the lapel of his jacket.  
“What’s your name?” he questioned, his hands remaining closely at his side  
“They call me honey,” she leant in closer, her lips delicately skating across his cheek as she spoke.

He could smell the liquor on her – it didn’t surprise him.  
“Your name is honey?”  
She was leaning against him now, but his hands never moved from his side.  
“No, that’s my specialty,” she smiled, her teeth pushing against her bottom lip.

He noticed the leather cuff bracelet on her left wrist. Finally moving his hand from the side of his body, he took her wrist tightly into his grip.

Her brow furrowed a little at the heavy handedness of his actions, but she didn’t protest. He unclipped the back of the cuff and slipped it from her wrist.  
“What are you doing?” she squeaked, trying to pull her arm away  
He ignored her protest, pulled a small device from his jacket pocket and ran in over her now exposed wrist.  
A second later a green light flashed on the same device.  
“Hello, Felicity Smoak,” he smiled, placing the device on the table and pulling another from his pocket.

Before she had time to react to anything he said or did she felt a sharp jolt and then nothing.

He caught her limp body, she was lighter than he had expected her to be – that was good, that would make his job easier.

He picked her up, slumping her over his shoulder. He felt an urge to cover up her exposed ass cheeks, but there was nothing around that didn’t look like it carried a multitude of diseases attached to it. Her lack of modesty would have to do until they reached the car outside.

He slipped out from behind the curtain and no one paid him any mind, the handful of patrons too caught up in the naked girls dancing on the stage in front of them.

He pulled a thick envelope from his jacket pocket and slammed it down on the bar in front of the bartender who was now wearing a decidedly gaping look on his face.  
“For your boss,” Oliver said sternly, “tell him if he or any of his buddies hires this one again, I won’t be the only guy in a leather jacket showing up, understood?”

His words were met with a slow nod.  
“Don’t make me come back here, this place is a shit stain,” he pointed towards the bartender and winked in a show of gest – a gesture that seem removed from the situation, considering he was carrying a very unconscious half naked girl over his shoulder.

He made a mental note of the song playing as he left the establishment – Poison by Alice Cooper, his father had been fond of that song.

 _Your mouth, so hot_  
_Your web, I'm caught_  
_Your skin, so wet_  
_Black lace, on sweat_  
_I hear you calling and it's needles and pins (and pins)_  
_I wanna hurt you just to hear you screaming my name_  
_Don't wanna touch you but you're under my skin (deep in)_  
_I wanna kiss you but your lips are venomous poison_

The mid afternoon sun outside was in stark contrast to the flashing pink lights inside and it took Oliver a moment to adjust his eyes to it.

He strolled towards the classic convertible Ford Mustang in the off-cream colour, oblivious to any attention he was drawing from the biker pulling up to the gas station on the opposite side of the road. In fact he took the opportunity to wave at the man, who seemed perplexed by what he was seeing.

He placed Felicity down in the passenger side of the car as a much older woman ran out through the front door of Mermaids, a pink bag in her hands. She spotted Oliver and made a beeline for him. He had his hand around the same small taser-like device that had rendered Felicity unconscious, in case he needed to use it again.

She deserved an award – he decided – for the way she cleared the parking lot in her clear plastic 9 inch heels.

“You take her home, she deserves better than this place,” the older lady said – probably in her 40s – although cigarettes and booze had likely aged her.  
“That’s what I’m paid to do,” he nodded slowly as she jutted out her arm, pushing the pink bag towards him.  
“Those are her things,” the lady backed away, stealing a quick look at Felicity in the front seat, she paused to say one thing further, “also, I have your licence plate number so I’ll know if she don’t make it back.”

Oliver nodded again – although he doubted she would remember it in 30 minutes and even if she could, it’s not likely she would know what to do with the information. Still, he wasn’t going to argue with her. He knew his intentions – he was taking the little rich run away home.

* * *

 

He was a few hundred miles from the Mississippi state line when Felicity stirred in the seat next to him.

She groaned first, her thumbs rubbing her temples as her eyes blinked open.  
“What the actual fuck?” she moaned her head rolling in semi circles, straining against the crick in her neck.  
“Wakey, wakey sunshine,” Oliver grinned throwing a bottle of water on her lap.  
“Who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing?” she wasn’t afraid of him, if she should be then something would have already happened, of that she was sure, “and where the fuck are we?” she had just noticed the car was driving a long stretch of highway.

He adjusted his sunglasses as the wind swept over the convertible car. He flicked a brief smile at her, amused by the tone she spoke in, given what he knew about her upbringing to hear her speak with such vulgarity made him smile.

“And what the fuck makes this so fucking funny?” she took a gulp of water, wiping the back of her hand through her lipstick.  
“You don’t talk much like a debutant,” he smiled tapping his hands on the steering wheel to the tune playing on the radio.

She narrowed her eyes at him, now sitting crossed legged in the seat, her hair whipping around her face.  
“So, they sent you?” her head dropped onto her open palm, propped up on the door frame, “You’re taking me back to Starling?” she already knew the answer.

“Home to your castle princess,” he was joking, but he was at a loss to understand why a girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth would chose to strip in a seedy club.  
“You don’t know shit,” she spat, fully aware of the tone he was taking with her, “but you can let me out wherever because there is fuck all they can do, I’m 20, I don’t need a babysitter and I’m not going back there,” she shifted her weight in the seat, anxiously he noted.

“You’re still 19, and I don’t think age matters much in this situation.”  
He leant over and pulled something from the glove box. He handed the three page document to her, void of a smile, fully aware of the implications that document contained.

Felicity looked down at the paper gripped between her hands.  
“Mother fucker,” she cursed, crumpling the paper angrily, “they're having me sanctioned?”

The paper was a copy of a sealed order from a Court which, in short, legally declared Felicity mentally unfit and required her to appear before a Judge in 2 weeks’ time.  
“Well you did run away from a large trust fund, to dance in a strip club, so some might agree with that judgment, right Honey?” he laughed to himself.  
She ignored his little dig, her focus elsewhere.

The light was falling below the horizon now, replaced with the bright orange and pinks of a setting sun.  
“You need to go back, so I can collect some things,” Felicity sighed, “I’m pretty sure this outfit will draw a crowd,” she spoke, stretching her leg out onto the dashboard and running a hand down it.  
Oliver gestured towards a large duffle back and a box in the back seat, “I emptied your hotel room.”  
“You broke into my room as well as kidnapped me?” she smirked side-eying him “what kind of cop are you?”  
“I’m no cop,” he shrugged, his eyes briefly falling down her leg – which he assumed was her intention of putting it up there in the first place.

She kept her eyes on him, noticing the flicker of distraction her leg on the dashboard was causing him. Combing her fingers through her hair she pulled out the clips along the hairline and gently pulled the wig from her head, revealing her golden blond hair, secured at the nape of her neck.

Oliver watched, intrigued – he hadn’t pick that as a wig which rattled him, mainly because he was an extremely good at picking up on things like that and if he didn’t, that meant he was distracted and for Oliver Queen, distraction was unacceptable.

He heard the click of the seatbelt but before he could catch her she had climbed over the front seat and perched herself on the back tray of the car, rummaging through the duffle bag.

“Shit,” he muttered, pulling off the highway into truck stop and garage.  
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, stepping from the car and slamming his door – breaking one of his most important rules.  
“Getting changed,” she shrugged, amused at the fire in his face.  
“Get back in your seat, dammit,” he had adopted his ‘angry father’ tone.  
The corner of her pink lips drew up into a smiled as she pulled off the mesh t-shirt and dropped it in the back seat.

In a stand-off of sorts he wouldn’t blink away and neither would she as she undid the suspenders and rolled the stockings slowly down each leg, dropping them in the same place as the t-shirt.

She stood up on the backseat, her feet wedged between the duffle bag and the plain cardboard box, watching Oliver with a glint of satisfaction in her eyes at his balled up fist.

Oliver noticed the crowd forming in the window of the truck stop behind him, middle aged men in flannel shirts with dirty caps were drawn to the sight.

“Get down,” Oliver hissed, preferring to not draw attention to himself.  
She waved at the truckers as she slipped down the barely there shorts, revealing an even smaller pair of lace panties.

It was at this point that Oliver used his height to bound up into the back seat and threw his jacket around her waist – barely covering her.  
“Aww, you’re disappointing them,” she smiled nodding towards the window where Oliver could see at least three faces of decidedly unhappy bearded men.  
“Fine, change your clothes, but please stop making a spectacle of it,” he said almost begging.  
She shrugged, pleased that he had managed to break before her, she slipped down between the duffle bag and the box and pulled on a pair of black jeans and a plain grey t-shirt.

Suddenly it occurred to Oliver that she now resembled any other 19 year old as she removed the pins from her hair and let is cascade in bouncing waves down her back. Finally she pulled a HUF cap from her bag and pulled it low on her head, tucking her loose hair behind her ears.

“Where are you going?” Oliver questioned, catching her arm as she went to leave the car  
“I’m hungry, they got a free show, I’m sure someone in there will buy me some food.”  
“We’re 50 miles from the state line, we’ll stop in Mississippi,” he replied, gesturing her back into the front seat.  
She obliged with a muted sigh and she ambled back into the smooth leather of the front seat.

Dusk was well and truly falling over them as Oliver made his way around the car, refusing to clamber over the interior of his beloved car. He leaned over the passenger side door and fumbled in the glove box for a moment before he made one swift motion and Felicity found her wrist handcuffed to the armrest of the door.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she laughed, clanging the handcuffs against the door, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a kinky bastard.”

Oliver bowed his head, a smirk forming across his face as he walked around the front of the car and slipped into the driver’s seat.

He pulled back onto the I-10 and they drove in virtual silence.  
“Why are we driving anyway?” she finally spoke after 15 minutes of silence, the road rushing past as night began to fall and headlights filled the view.  
“I don’t fly,” he replied abruptly, twisting his grip in the steering wheel.  
She looked over at him, trying to decide whether or not to pursue that deeper, she decided against it.  
“Are you taking the longest route possible?” she asked, aware that a route that took them through Mississippi would not be the quickest way to Starling.  
“We have a stop to make on the way.”

He leaned over slightly and adjusted the volume on the radio up – signalling rather obviously that for now, he was done talking.

True to his word, just under an hour later they passed over the state line into Mississippi.

 

 

 

 


	2. Mississippi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have become best friends with Google Maps, but even the best of friends get things wrong sometimes, please excuse any errors I may make.
> 
> I'm not American, I will always spell it 'colour' - enjoy the change.

  
Oliver pulled off the road into the dimly lit parking lot of a dingy looking family restaurant attached to arguably an even dingier motel. He looked over at Felicity expecting her to have a look of horror on her face that he would even attempt to stay in such a place, but she gave him nothing, her free arm simply wrapped around her waist and her lips folded into a waiting expectation directed at him.

“Are you just going to sit here?” she questioned, dutifully aware he was expecting some sort of reaction from her. She wasn’t stupid, Felicity knew he had a preconceived idea about her but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, even if it meant hiding her true thoughts on the piece of shit place he was going to get a room in.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he smiled, laughing at his own jesting as he stepped out of the car, closing the door with a careful flick of his wrist – just enough to close it, never forceful enough to make it bang.

She smiled sarcastically flicking him the finger with her handcuffed hand.

She watched him walk clear across the parking lot. He had opted to park close to a lamp post, but far from any prying eyes in the windows of both the restaurant and the motel. She watched him open the motel door and step inside.

With her free hand she pulled a bobby pin from the underside of her cap. In less than a minute she had used it to pick the lock on the handcuffs and release her hand. She looked up and down the highway, it was moderately busy, but she had no way of guaranteeing how long it would take for her to get a ride. There was a gas station a mile back and she decided that would be her best hope. She went to get the duffle bag from the back when a leather satchel behind the driver’s seat caught her eye. She could do with some money and whatever that thing was that he swiped over her wrist.

She pushed her thumb along the scar that was a constant reminder of a decision she had made long ago as a frightened teenager. She was told the scar that lined her wrist, together with the other few she hid as best she could, were a result of that decision – now a constant reminder of that night. However looking at it now, thumbing over it, she could feel _something_ foreign in there – she had always felt something but this time she knew it was there.

She moved her mind back to the task at hand, aware her time was limited to how inept the person behind the reception desk at the motel was. Pulling the satchel onto her lap she began rummaging through it. She found the device without much trouble and held it over her wrist. It flashed green as her name scrolled across a small display.

“Mother fucker,” she hissed under her breath. That thing had to go.  
She opened the car door and placed in on the ground in front of her. She drew her leg up, mustered every ounce of anger she had flowing through her and slammed the heel of her boot onto it. It’s plastic outer split apart, spilling its contents onto the concrete underneath.

She scooped up the contents and contemplated throwing them away, but as a devilish smile flickered across her face she decided instead to leave a message. She dropped the very broken device back into the satchel, “Oops,” she smiled to herself.

She pulled out a wallet next. She fingered through the contents, sticking the hundred odd dollars he had in notes into her bra.  
“Thank you,” she realised she was only talking to herself – she had always done that, apparently she was the only one that didn’t find that weird.

“Oliver Queen,” she smirked, trying to mimic his deep voice as she read looked at his driver’s licence, “why are you such a fucking kill joy?” she laughed doing the math in her head to arrive at his age – he was only 23, 24 in a few months.

She pulled the licence out to get a better view from the light above. A small photo from behind it dropped to the floor. She picked it up, its edges were worn, the colour looked faded – it was old, at least two years. It was a photo of a baby, maybe a couple of months old, a girl one would assume from the large flowery headband on her head, her bright toothless smile beamed off the photo which was staged like you get from a mall photo centre – blue clouded background, the baby girl sitting in a suitcase with a teddy bear folded in next to her.

Felicity placed the photo gently back in its place, returning the licence also – it was no good to her.

She sensed it was time to go when her thumb drew across a manila folder in the satchel, causing her to look down and see her name on it.  
“Fuck,” she mumbled looking towards the door, if she was going to disappear into the night she needed to go now, but she really, _really_ wanted to know what was in that folder.  
“Fucking fuck,” she pulled the folder from the satchel and opened it.

It had a photo, probably taken a few months before she left. She was wearing a floor length pink dress, her hair pulled away from her face, secured at her crown, the back falling into loose waves. She didn’t remember that night – just another stuffy Kuttler family event she was required to attend. She was smiling in the picture and to anyone who didn’t really know her they would have assumed she was happy to be there – but look closer at the eyes and they would have seen a very different story.

She slammed the photo face down on the open side of the folder, thumbing through the rest of the contents. Another copy of the Court order “Fuckers” she muttered casting her eye briefly over it again. Hand written notes she didn’t have time to decipher. A medical report from 2006 – she was surprised that was there, but much of it had been redacted – big black lines running across the page, hiding information that had once been there, the date was left intact though _28 February 2006_ her 17th birthday.

Her time was up when she saw the door open across the parking lot.  
She cursed under her breath, folding the documents back into the folder and shoving it back into the satchel which she returned to the floor behind the driver’s seat. She returned the bobby pin to her the underside of her cap and placed the handcuff back onto her wrist.

For now she would go where Oliver Queen decided. There was nothing for her in Florida – she might as well hitch a ride with him for at least a few more states. The locked clicked down on her wrist and she sat back in the chair.

“Did you get us a nice room baby?” she winked sarcastically as he approached the car  
He said nothing as he pulled a key from his pocket and, leaning over the door, he unlocked the side of the handcuffs attached to the door.

He opened the door for her, beckoning her out of the car. She complied, purposely sliding her body against his as she stepped out of the car. She noted the way his chest stiffened against her touch – that was the body language of a man trying to stay in control. Her first thought was he was probably married, the young child in his wallet probably his daughter – both sitting in their middle class suburban house waiting for the dashing man of the house to return home.

He looped his arm with hers, in a gesture made simply to keep her close, given the proximity of eyes around. He’d rather not draw any unnecessary attention, his job was much easier when local law enforcement didn’t get involved.

He took a path that avoided the windows of the restaurant and stopped outside Room 8. The door opened into the dark room, a distinctive smell of bleach tainting his nostrils – at least that meant it had been cleaned recently.

He switched the lights on, revealing the small studio room with pink walls and off white well-worn carpet. He relaxed his hold on her arm and she slid it out, stepping into the room.  
“I love it, it’s perfect,” she laughed, running her hand across the flowery bedspread.

Her fingers walked along the edge of the bed and across the pillow before a strong, but not rough, hand on her shoulder guided her to sit down. She sat just below the puffed up pillow and as he leaned in towards her, her body froze in trepidation and she felt 16 again. He wasn’t looking at her so didn’t notice her eyes screw closed and her lips twitching, perhaps if he did he wouldn’t have snapped the handcuff onto the bed frame.

Her body jolted at the sound, her eyes jerking open. She was almost relieved when she realised what he had done. She felt her chest relax and her mind gain control of itself again. Sure, she could use her body to get what she wanted in life, but she was determined to make sure it was always her in control of the situation.

“I’m going to get some food and the stuff from the car, make yourself comfortable,” he smiled handing her the remote.  
She took the remote from his hands and jangled the handcuffs against the cast-iron bed head “are these really necessary?”  
He cocked his head to the side in the smallest of nods, “we both know the answer to that.”

She waved him out the door with her free hand and listened for the sound of him locking the door. He hadn’t brought his satchel in with him so she felt no need to release herself from the handcuffs, instead she settled into the bed and turned on the TV.

* * *

  
Oliver returned with bags slung over his shoulders and take out containers balance perilously on oversized soda cups.  
“No caviar then?” Felicity laughed sarcastically, playing on the assumption of her he had already formed in his head  
“Sorry princess, they were all out,” he kicked the door closed with his foot and placed the food on a small table beside the TV before unceremoniously dumping the bags on the couch to the side of the bed.

He made his way over to her and released her from both ends of the handcuffs.  
“I trust, you won’t try and stab me?” he winked, the kind of wink that a person does when they know what they’re saying.

 _That is obviously in his dumb file_ she thought, pursing her lips at what other one sided information was contained in there.  
“No promises,” she smirked back.

“May I be excused to have a shower?” she continued, standing up from the bed and dipping her body into a curtsy.  
Oliver had already started eating the food when he nodded her towards the bathroom.

Felicity was still an enigma to him. He had spent some days poring over her file given to him by her family. She was a model teenager until a couple of years ago where it seemed like she changed overnight. He had studied people for years and what he saw in her wasn’t that she was trouble, but that she was _troubled_.

She stopped in the doorway on the bathroom, her hand gliding up the doorframe.  
“Are you at least going to tell me your name?” for once there was no sarcasm or mocking in her tone. She knew his name, but she was aware it had not passed from his lips.  
“Oliver,” he replied, his answer also removed of any mocking tone.  
“Well, thank you Oliver,” she said softly for nothing in particular.

Felicity ran the hot water over her body, each scorching droplet piercing through her skin leaving a red blotch in its wake. She always ran it hot in some contrived effort to feel clean. The tears bore tracks down her cheeks. She was crying for nothing specific but it was only ever in the heat of the shower where she would let herself cry – she would cry for her mother, cry for her choices and cry for the choices that were never hers to make.

* * *

  
Oliver watched the bathroom door with an intensity that would have burned holes in the wood if he was superman. He was holding himself together well enough, he was a professional after all. Felicity Smoak wasn’t the first pretty girl he’d collected, but there was something about her that had him feel like he was walking a knife’s edge of control around her.

He heard the shower stop and a few minutes later she stepped from the bathroom, a halo of steam following her. Wet hair cascaded down her back in sectioned waves, water pooling at the tips, a white towel wrapped around her glistening body – still littered with droplets glinting in the white light above her.

Oliver’s eyes walked up her legs without his control, following the curve of her thigh till it reached the hem of the towel. He couldn’t stop his eyes from dancing across her bare shoulders, pausing for just a moment at her chest – watching it slowly rise and fall, the towel barely holding together at the folded over knot.

She watched him with fascination, she could tell he was trying to focus any else but on her, but his eyes gave him away as they searched across her body.

She padded over to him, her blue eyes glinting at the way his body shifted uncomfortably in the chair. She made him nervous and she couldn’t help but find a little pleasure in that knowledge.

She leaned over the table, her damp hair brushing up against him as she took a chili fry from his plate. Twisting her body onto her elbows, leaning on the table underneath her, she smiled up at him.  
“So, Oliver, do you like what you see?”  
Her eyes narrowed mischievously.

Oliver slapped his hands together as he stood from the chair.  
“Why do you do that?” Oliver quipped, pushing the chair back under the table  
She ignored him, twisting her body back around as she reached for another fry.  
“You use your body as a tool, a weapon,” he continued, toeing off his shoes as he leant against the arm of the couch.

Her eyes flashed a steel blue as she stood up, her body only slightly perched on the edge of the table.  
“Isn’t that what every man wants?” she stared him down, her refusal to break his eye contact intrigued him.  
“And what is it you want?” his words were soft, his question a genuine one.  
“The freedom to choose,” her eyes dropped in a blink to the floor before returning to his and for the first time since their meeting he felt her answer was a genuine one.

He pulled the manila folder from his satchel by his feet and handed it to her. She looked down, puzzled by his gesture.  
“You have a right to know what they told me,” he gestured for her to take the folder.  
Wearily she took it from his hands and thumbed over the parts she had already seen. As she expected there were numerous other reports – police, medical, accident and psychological – much of it blocked out, redacted with black vivid lines.

“Do you believe this?” Felicity questioned softly, a hand running through her damp hair, her other hand holding out the Court order

Oliver shrugged, this wasn’t his business and not part of his job.  
“Your parents seem to care about you Felicity.”  
Her eyes shot up to him, fire burning in the blue iris, “That woman is not my mother, Rebecca Merlyn is not my mother, and this,” she was holding the order clutched in a fist, “they got by throwing money at it.”

She shook her head softly, her hair falling across her shoulders. She could feel her heart shifting upwards into her throat. She was losing control and that wasn’t okay. She stood from the bed, casting the folder off behind her like its contents were irrelevant.

Closing the gap between her and the couch where Oliver still sat perched on the arm, with her back towards him Felicity opened the duffle bag of her belongings as she unrolled the knot in the towel, sending it billowing to the floor.

Oliver tried to pry his eyes away, but he was a human of the male variety and his eyes had already latched onto the very naked curve of her body. He watched with scrutiny the tiny water drop that started from the tip of her hair as it rolled slowly over every curve her body made, trailing down her spine, over the soft dip at the small of her back, over her perfectly rounds ass, down her sculpted thigh and trailing off down her leg. It was mesmerising.

Felicity could feel his eyes on her, she sensed him stand and take a step towards her, his statuesque figure now just inches from her. She could feel his breath against her back, slow, steady and warm, melting into her damp skin.

She felt his finger trail up her spine, reversing the path of the water drop he’d watched moments before. She didn’t falter at his touch, though it was lighter than she had expected it to be. He held the light touch up to the base of her neck, his face now hovering above her shoulder, his breath now soft against her ear as he folded back her hair, exposing her shoulder.

Oliver traced an invisible line across her bare shoulder, her skin like satin underneath. Rounding the curve of her shoulder he felt the light scattering of tiny bumps across her skin and he felt her body flicker ever so slightly as he reached the inside of her elbows.

His finger disembarked from her skin, floating over to the bag in front of her, his arm grazing against her own as he pulled a long black t-shirt from her bag and, holding it in his hand he lightly smoothed it against her chest.  
“You’ll get cold,” he whispered stoically into her ear as his lips danced a kiss dangerously close to her.

Oliver was unsure of the intentions behind her little show, but he was certain it was not out of an attraction she felt for him, still it had taken every ounce of self control he had not to take advantage of the clear proposition she had held out to him.

Felicity pulled the t-shirt over her head, the length of it covering down to her mid thigh. She expelled a small breath from her parted lips. She was equal parts relieved and surprised that he had not taken her up on the unspoken offer she had presented to him.

She wanted to curiously ask him why, she had seen the looks he had given her, she was sure she had not misread them.  
“So,” she smiled, padding over to the relatively untouched soda, “I bet your wife and kids miss you,” she caught her mistake – she shouldn’t have been aware of the child in his wallet, but she smiled through the mistake hoping he would shrug it off as a lucky guess.

He glanced up at her as he laid a blanket down on the couch, now void of their bags which had been moved to the floor.  
“I’m not married and I don’t have any kids,” he answered simply before returning to the cupboard to collect a second blanket.

His answer was curious to her – _who carried a photo of a child they ‘didn’t have’?_  
_Perhaps_ , she thought, _he just didn’t share his personal information with his wards._

She drew a long sip of her drink, her eyes watching him as he laid the second blanket over the couch which was far too short for him to comfortably sleep on.

Still, after ensuring the door was locked he slid the couch in front of the door and settled into it, puffing the pillow he had taken from the bed, his feet dangling over the arm of the couch as she suspected they would.

She smiled silently at his intentions to keep her in the room, given how easily she could have absconded earlier in the night had she really wanted to.

* * *

  
Midnight fell around them as Felicity slid into empty bed. She let her eyes flutter closed, Oliver’s presence providing her with a feeling she had not felt in a while – safe.

It was close to 8am when Oliver unceremoniously shook Felicity awake.  
Her eyes flickered open, adjusting to the light streaming in from the naked windows.  
“We leave in 10 minutes,” he spoke, as her body automatically stretched out.

He had woken at 6am – something he did like clockwork every morning, even on days where he was home and nothing was required of him. He had showered and dressed, pushed the couch back and replaced the blankets, checked out of the motel and then sat down for a particularly strong dark roast coffee from the machine in the motel lobby.

Felicity had slept soundly through it all and he couldn’t help but notice how particularly small she looked laying in the queen sized bed alone. She carried herself a certain way that he had not noticed how much taller than her he would have been. It was only in sleep – or in an unconscious state, like when he had carried her from _Mermaids_ – that he could truly appreciate her age and fragility.

He had taken the time afforded to him to look over her file again, his fingers tracing along the black lines that hid certain information from him. This was not unusual for him to see, every family held its secrets, every person had things they didn’t wish to share with someone who was tantamount to a stranger, but in this case it was the first time he actually cared what was underneath those thick black lines.

She had risen without complaint after he had woken her, and with one minute to spare in his 10 minute window, they were back in the cream coloured Mustang, her clothing choice the same as yesterday, her hair pulled back into a high knotted bun at her crown and her demeanour far removed from the bravado of yesterday – replaced instead with a quiet and distant one.

They made only one stop on the way at a small diner off US49 where he ate a full breakfast and chatted with a friendly waitress and she drunk half a coffee and ate barely a scrap of toast as she starred out the window.

The drive across the state was just over 3 hours and as they passed over the winding Mississippi River at the state line, Oliver could help but recognise that the Mississippi motel room had shown him that there was more to this runaway than he could put his finger on.

 


	3. Louisiana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have become best friends with Google Maps, but even the best of friends get things wrong sometimes, please excuse any errors I may make.
> 
> I'm not American, I will always spell it 'colour' - enjoy the change.

The noon sun was high in the cloudless sky as they travelled the straight vastly plain landscape of I-20.

Oliver was bouncing words around in his head, the awkwardness of the silence in the car was jolting. Silence didn’t often bother him, in fact in most circumstances he would prefer that, but it was unnerving, like he was travelling in the car with a different girl than the one who had been sitting next to him less than 24 hours before.

Felicity watched the scenery rush past, there was little but trees and grass to see but it gave her a sense of calm. She had always hated cities. Her happiest moments were the ones she barely remembered sitting atop the red dirt staring at the vast expanse of nothing to one side and the glittering lights of a city she had known only a short time on the other side, her mother’s arms wrapped tightly around her telling her she could be anything she wanted to be.

As far as Felicity saw it – her mother had been wrong.

Oliver saw the black car closing the gap behind him, they must have been going close to 90miles an hour. He leaned down a little, his hand travelling under the seat, his fingers dancing out the shape of the gun he had strapped underneath there.

For a time the silence didn’t bother him as the car travelled dangerous close to the bumper before swerving wildly into the second lane of the highway.

Pulling up alongside the window of the car rolled down, Oliver prepared himself – a foot hovering over the brake pedal, his hands gripped against the smooth steering wheel. Few things in life gave him cause to panic – this was not one of them.

Felicity finally registered the car as the passenger – a testosterone plagued 20 year old male – leaned out the window and yelled something about her chest. Oliver couldn’t make out the words, but whatever they said, Felicity returned the interactions with an extended middle finger.

The passenger threw his hands across his chest in a sign of heart break before falling back into the car which then proceeded to boost past them in a black streak and a puff of smoke.

“I think you broke his heart,” Oliver quipped, his grip relaxing on the steering wheel.  
“Yeah well, I reserve these for only people worth them,” she replied expressionless as she cupped her own breasts.  
“So I’m worth it? You seemed pretty confident in showing me them,” Oliver replied before he had a chance to formulate something that may have sounded less creepy.

Felicity turned her head to look at him – he noted it was probably the only time since they had started off this morning.

She pursed her lips at him, last night for her had been a test. By his refusal to sleep with her, he had passed – at least for now. She had little – if any – trust in most men, especially ones that, like Oliver, were young enough to charm a naïve teenager but old enough to know that they shouldn’t. Especially when…. She shook her head, she wouldn’t go back there, she wouldn’t let that have a place in her mind right now.

“Nope,” she replied with a smile, “but if it makes you feel better you can think that,” she shrugged, leaning back into the chair, her feet balancing back on the dashboard.

“So the woman I met, Rebecca? She’s your step mother?” Oliver questioned, eager to continue some form of communication.  
“In that she is married to my father, yes,” Felicity swept loose hair from her face, her eyes were staring dead ahead as she finished her sentence, “in that she is any sort of mother to me, no.”  
“So it was the wicked step mother than made you run away?” Oliver cocked his head back into a grin – knowing Felicity would respond to his mocking humour.  
“Yes, I have a case of Disney princess disorder, you fucking twat,” Felicity mocked, her lips turned up into a smirk.

“By the way I’ll be billing them for the scanner you broke and the money you took,” Oliver smiled looking briefly over at Felicity, “I don’t know when or how you got it, care to tell me?”  
Felicity’s mouth pursed into a muted grin as she drew a finger across her lips like a zip.  
“What was that scanner thing anyway?” she questioned, rubbing her hand across the cuff she wore around he scarred wrist.  
“It reads the microchip you had implanted,” Oliver replied, his brow showing surprise that she didn’t know this.  
Felicity shook her head slowly, “you mean the microchip they had implanted in me like I’m a fucking pet”  
“You didn’t know?”  
Felicity’s mouth turned downward, “no idea.”

She turned her head back out to the view, a shining light caught her attention up ahead almost under the bridge they were about to cross over.

“Oliver, there’s something down there.”  
As the words came from her mouth Oliver had already seen the black tire tracks spiralling off the road.

He pulled the car over into the shoulder and to a complete stop just before the entrance to the bridge, there was not another car in sight.  
“Stay here,” he said as he stepped out from the car and ran down the slight embankment to the river below.

He could see the mangled wreck of what he thought was a black car upside down in the flowing river. The top cab of the car was submerged, smoke billowed from the undercarriage as the distinctive smell of burnt rubber pungent in the air.

“Felicity call 911,” he pulled his phone from his back pocket and ran it halfway back up the embankment – where despite him requesting she stay in the car – Felicity had run to meet him.

She saw the car and froze a pensive look of fear wiping across her face.  
“Felicity,” Oliver called a second time, noting she hadn’t dialled a number yet.  
“FELICITY,” he yelled, causing her to jolt backwards “dial 911” he pointed down to the phone in her hands.

She nodded, stepping back from the scene.  
Oliver peeled off his jacket and his shoes and ran into the swollen river. The water lapped against the doors of the car, the window closest to him was down, spilling water into the car.

He dove under the water and saw the arm out the window first, motionless, but that didn’t mean it was pointless.

Bracing his body against the side of the car he manoeuvred the floating body from the car. The young guy was solid, but the buoyancy of the water gave Oliver the leverage enough to pull him free. Standing up, Oliver pulled his head above the water line, there was a cough, followed by a spluttering – that one was still alive.

Without ceremony Oliver threw him onto the riverbank where Felicity who had already called for emergency service was now waiting. She mustered whatever strength she had and dragged the solid built guy not much older than her up the bank. She recognised him as the one who had – in far less cordial words – requested to see her chest.

She watched Oliver wade quickly to the other side of the car. The smell of gasoline was getting stronger, a black slick of it leaking into the river.

It seemed like Oliver was under the water and out of sight for hours, but it was only a matter of minutes till he reappeared clutching another young male under the arms and across the chest, dragging him backwards through the water.

Felicity had turned the larger one onto his side, crouching beside him as he regained the colour to his face.

She ran to the water’s edge, the smaller one Oliver had under the arms wasn’t moving. She heard the approaching sirens closing in fast and as Oliver laid him out on the bank he was met by an EMT who gestured him away with a nod.

Oliver fell back onto the muddied grass, soaked through and exhausted. Felicity sat down next to him, her tough facade slipping from her face “are you okay?”  
Breathlessly Oliver nodded, pain resonating through his left shoulder as he tried to roll the joint.

“You’re hurt?” Felicity asked, her eyes searching his in a moment of genuine concern  
“It’s fine I just pulled something,” Oliver responded, noting for once she had dropped the wall she usually had up.  
Felicity instinctively touched her hand to his shoulder, “you’re soaked through, you should change your clothes,” she didn’t even realise she was touching him till her hand was rubbing up and down his arm.

She pulled her hand back at the realisation and folded it under her arm.

“Are you guys alright?” one the EMTs asked walking near.  
“We’re fine, are they?” Oliver nodded towards the stretcher being loaded in the back.  
“They’ll both be fine, thanks to you guys,” he smiled before walking away.

The ambulance disappeared in a fog of siren and lights, leaving them sitting on the embankment in silence.  
“You should change and get into a warm shower.”  
Oliver sighed, he wasn’t intending on stopping in this state but she was right.

They trudged back to the car, Felicity carrying his jacket and shoes.

She turned her back to him in a moment of shyness as he peeled off his wet clothing. Seeing her shy away from him was almost humorous to him, given the unabashed way she paraded her own body around. It was a drop in the character Oliver thought she was trying portray, as to the reasons why she felt she needed to play a part – he was unsure.

* * *

  
The hotel was only 30 minutes away in a small Township off the highway. Oliver was shuddering by the time they reached the room despite his change of clothes.

“Go to the shower, warm up,” Felicity ordered gesturing towards the bathroom.  
Oliver hovered in the room, glancing between Felicity and the bathroom.  
Felicity held her hands out in front of her “You really want to handcuff me don’t you?” she laughed.  
“Just, just stay here,” he shivered, his mind too preoccupied with the pain in his shoulder.

* * *

  
Oliver let the hot water spill over him, encasing his shivering body in a blanket of heat and steam. Felicity, the girl with the faded smile and the chip on her shoulder, was occupying his mind. He had never felt this preoccupation with anyone, let alone someone he barely knew but there was a distinctive softness behind her steeled eyes and a shy sadness behind the bravado and he was unintentionally finding himself fascinated by it.

Felicity looked towards the bathroom, the noise of the running water and the extractor fan coursing through the room. She slipped off the jeans she had been wearing, now blotted with dried mud, and tossed them aside. She pulled on a clean pair of black shorts, the hem of which sat just below the curve of her ass cheeks as she looked out the ground level window and smiled.

She opened the door as a well-built 20 something guy in a baseball cap and a black crewneck t-shirt sauntered past the door.  
She smiled sweetly at him, her now-bare leg stretched out in front of her. He slowed and tipped his hat towards her.  
“Are you from around here?” she asked, blinking her eyes at him as her lips parted.  
“Sure am, my parents own the motel,” he smiled back, taking a step off his planned path to walk in closer to Felicity.

“My brother and I got some clothes dirty and I need a laundromat, do you know where one is?” she ran a finger down the crook of her neck, stopping just under the neck line of the tank top she was wearing, the tip of the finger disappearing just under the fabric.  
“I could clean those here for you if you like?” he gingerly offered.

Felicity pouted her lips together and forced a blush “oh my word, would you do that for me?”  
“A pretty girl like you, of course I would, maybe I could drop them by afterwards, with some drinks,” he took another step closer, his eyes lingering on the finger Felicity was dancing under the neckline of her tank.  
She smiled rocking her head to the side and blinking up at him, “I am partial to a bourbon and cola,” another free finger wrapped around a bouncing lock of hair.

He nodded dumbly, his arms outstretched and ready to receive the clothes. She turned her back to him, rolling her eyes as she gathered Oliver’s soiled clothes and her own. Turning back towards him she smiled as her teeth trapped her tongue between them.  
“Thanks, I really,” she paused leaning in closer to him “really, appreciate that.”

He nodded again, backing away, his hands now carrying the dirty clothes.  
Felicity waved before closing the door.  
_Dumb sap_ she smiled to herself.  
Boobs and a well-timed smile could get most young males to do anything. _Predictable saps._

“Was someone at the door?” Oliver questioned, appearing from behind the bathroom door, dressed in only a pair of sweatpants, rubbing the white towel over his chiselled physique.  
“Laundry service,” Felicity smiled, combing a hand through her tousled locks.  
“I don’t think this is the type of place that has a laundry service princess,” he smiled, his use of the word _princess_ now less condescending.  
Felicity shrugged.

“How is your shoulder?” she asked, her eyes wandering across his well-toned chest.  
She had been able to tell he was fit by the shape he cut in the t-shirts he wore, but seeing him shirtless in front of her now almost made her gape a little – she would be remiss not to notice that he was, in fact, quite handsome.

He rolled the joint in a circle, each movement sending a spiking pain down his arm.  
“That good huh?” she smiled, shaking her head at the grimace on his face.  
“Sit,” she instructed, directing Oliver to the bed.  
He wasn’t sure why he was listening to her but without questioning it he sat himself on the bed, the white towel discarded to the side of him.

Felicity perched behind him, propped up on her knees which tucked in close either side of him. He felt a warmth brush across his shoulder, it was a touch he had not allowed himself the luxury of in months – maybe longer. His back stiffened at her touch as her breath mingled with the dewy remnants from his shower.  
“Relax,” she laughed gently in his ear, “I’ll keep my clothes on,” she paused, exhaling the softest breath against his neck, “at least for now.”

He shifted next to her almost ready to stand up when the palm of her hand hit the exact spot the pain was emanating from.  
“Fuck,” he cursed, settling back onto the bed.  
“He does curse after all,” Felicity replied jovially.

She felt herself relaxing around him, something she had not done in years. People came with conditions – that was her take on the world – men always came with more conditions. She hadn’t forgot – nor was she naive not to recognise – that Oliver Queen was the one who was attempting to return her to a place she would not go voluntarily. She knew the time would come when they would stand against each other and she was confident in her ability to win that fight, but, for now she would enjoy a moment that didn’t come with conditions attached.

Oliver ignored her quip at him, focusing instead on the pain that he was been subjected to.  
“Did you learn this at torture finishing school?” he stammered in halted breaths.  
“Of course, it was an elective after the class on bondage.”  
He smiled, she had an answer for everything.

His eyes caught sight of the cuff she wore on her wrist, the one he had removed only days ago, the same one that hid a scar he had noticed her idly playing with at the accident scene as they sat on the embankment.  
“How did it happen?” he asked, touching a finger to it which caused her to recoil.

“Car accident,” she replied simply, her tone returning to the unanimated one he had come to know as her ‘ _don’t want to talk about it’_ tone.  
He had read about an accident in his notes, but there was very little detail left intact. Her reaction when first coming across the wreck at the bridge now made sense.  
“I'm sorry, today must have been hard,” Oliver spoke gently.

She shrugged, “We all make choices,” she replied cryptically, smoothing her hands across his naked back. Softer in her pressure now, a fluid motion etching a path down each dip and curve the defined muscles in his back made.  
For a moment he melted into the pattern she drew across his back, her hands felt good against his skin, it was undeniable. He caught himself before he moaned his enjoyment.  
“You made a choice to crash your car?”  
“That’s what they tell me.”  
“And what do you tell you?”  
Felicity’s hand halted on his back.  
“Are they paying you for this information too? To see what I know, see what I’ll fucking tell you?” she slapped his shoulder harder than she intended to as she stood off the bed.

She went to slide past him but he caught her arm.  
“Felicity, that’s not it,” he retorted.  
She stopped moving and turned her eyes towards him, her bare legs tucked up next to him, her lips sitting closed and expressionless.

Her eyes moved between his, unsure whether she should, or could, trust him. People had conditions, what made her think for a moment he was any different? Then she saw it, the glint in his clear blue eyes, despite his quips at her, despite the opinion he had formed of her and despite the fact he was taking her out of duress across the country, she saw no malice in his eyes and she felt no judgment from them.

“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business,” he blinked away, uncomfortable with the way he found himself thinking about her.  
“You’re right, it’s not,” she replied stoically.  
“I’m going to walk down the road to the store and get some food and something for that,” she nodded towards his shoulder, “I finish the massage when I get back.”  
“Felicity, I-,“ Oliver went to disagree with that plan but she turned as she reached for the doorknob and smiled.  
“If I wanted to leave, I could have already,” she smiled.  
It was a fact he couldn’t deny and frankly he was ready to close his eyes for just a moment anyway.

* * *

  
He woke up close on an hour and a half later, alarmed by the fading light that was the early evening closing in on them. He looked around the room, everything was as it had been but he didn’t see her.

He stood up quickly from the bed, jolting his shoulder which sent a ricochet of pain down to his fingertips.  
“Shit” he muttered reaching for the keys that were still sitting atop the table in the corner.  
He reached the door of the room and flung it open, surprised to find Felicity sitting on a bench just outside the door a polaroid camera balanced on her lap.

She looked up at the sudden noise of the door opening.  
“Hey sleepyhead,” she smiled waving a freshly taken photograph between her fingers.  
He rubbed his eyes feverishly, adjusting to the speed at which he’d practically fallen out of bed.  
“You’re still around?” he yawned, his words barely formed.  
“I told you, for now I’m voluntarily accompanying you, no handcuffs required, unless you ask really nicely,” she winked before looking down at the photo in her hands.  
It was of a single yellow flower set amongst a bushel of twisted weeds, the flower itself considered by most as a weed, a delicate pink light flaring in the corner where the sunset tips danced into view.  
Felicity noticed Oliver’s eyes trying to make sense of the photo.  
“We all find beauty in different places,” shed shrugged gathering the camera and a few other photos into her hands, “I got cup noodles,” she smiled brushing past him in the doorway.

Minutes later as they were quietly eating the ‘similar to cardboard’ cup noodles there was a knock at the door. Oliver went to stand but Felicity bet him to it. She wet her lips and flicked her hair over her shoulder before opening the door.

The guy from earlier went to step inside, but with a smile Felicity positioned herself in the doorway halting any advancement he could make.  
“Aww, are those my things?” she cooed softly.  
He nodded holding out the clean, dried and folded clothes. She took them with a smile tucking them under her arm.

Oliver leaned back in the chair watching all this take place with great interest.  
“Is that for me?” she exclaimed nodded to the six pack of bourbon and cola in his hands.  
He nodded once again, handing them over to her. Felicity took them with a bat of eyelashes, placing them on the floor inside the room.  
“You are so sweet, me and the hubby really appreciate this.”  
The young guy’s eyes widened “your husband?”  
“Mmmm hmmmm,” Felicity blinked, “isn’t he a dish,” she blew a kiss back towards Oliver who slowly waved his fingers at the very surprised young man.  
“I thought you said you were here with your brother,” he replied in a hushed tone, his eyes flicking back and forth between Felicity and Oliver.  
“Nope, I don’t think so,” she kept smiling as she placed a gentle hand on his cheek, “we sure do appreciate it, we’ll be giving this place rave reviews.”

She stepped back into the room and waved as she closed the door on him.

“That was cruel,” Oliver laughed settling back into his noodles.  
Felicity shrugged placing the freshly laundered clothes on the bed before padding back to the table.  
“He was clearly smitten and wanted to drink those with you,” Oliver grinned waving his fork to the drinks on the floor.  
“He can use it as a life lesson,” Felicity sat back in the chair, folding her legs up to her knees, balancing the noodle cup on top.  
“And what lesson is that?” Oliver rolled noodles around his fork tapping off the excess liquid.  
“Fucked if I know, but I’m sure there’s one in there,” Felicity laughed.

* * *

  
Twenty minutes and two empty food containers later, they were on the bed once again, Oliver sitting against the headboard idly flicking through TV channels and Felicity lying backwards on the bed her feet pressed firmly on the wall behind the headboard.

She sighed rolling on to her stomach before she slid off the bed and collected two of the drinks from the six pack on the floor, handing one to Oliver she sat down next to him on the bed.

“You’re not old enough to drink that,” Oliver jested.  
“You handcuffed me to a bed, you really want to quibble drinking age with me?”  
Oliver shrugged, she had a point. He had been intending to leave before nightfall, but he had driven a solid week to get down to Florida and he was beginning to feel the effects.

He opened the bottle and handed it to her before taking the other for himself. She took a swig, her soft hair tumbling down her back, her silken smooth neck exposed to him. He looked away before his mind could be filled with thoughts he best not entertain.

“Truth or dare?” she said coyly, reaching over him to grab a hair tie she had left on the bedside table, “don’t be a party pooper,” she smiled twisting her hair up into a bun.  
He sighed, her effect on him was ongoing “truth” he replied taking a mouthful of the smooth liquid.  
“Why didn’t you try to fuck me last night?” she asked bluntly, barely batting an eyelid at the coyness of her question.  
Oliver spluttered as the drink spilled into his wind pipe. He managed to swallow it before coughing out in surprise. Her question was a blunt one.

Once he regained his composure he took a minute to think on it, his brow furrowing as his head searched for the right words.  
“Because you didn’t really want to. I don’t know your reasons for doing it, but you use sex as a weapon to control someone and I wasn’t going to take advantage of that despite –,“ he stopped himself before he said more, but she had caught the word.  
“Despite?”  
“Despite you offering,” there was more to it, but he couldn’t explain the attraction he was feeling towards her to himself, let alone her. She was complex but mesmerising.  
“What if I offered again?”  
He got the distinct impression she was toying with him again as her eyes watched him over the rim of her bottle clutched close to her mouth.  
“That’s another question and I think it’s my turn to ask. Truth or dare?”

Her mouth turned up into a smile as she shrugged her shoulders and responded nonchalantly, “truth.”  
“Why did you leave Starling?” he asked  
She groaned at his question as she stood off the bed and padded around the room “We had a differing of opinions”  
“That’s not really an answer,” he retorted, skulling back his drink.  
“Then ask a different question” she smiled, cocking her head to the side as she idly ran her fingers up to her messy bun, pulling the hair tie from around it.

Oliver watched as she shook her hair free, amused at the fact it was only minutes before that she had tied it up. She sat down, cross-legged on the floor, her eyes daring him to do the same.

“Why did you change your name?” he questioned, settling down on the floor opposite her, his legs splayed in front of him as his naked back set up against the side of the bed.  
He knew she had gone by her father’s name until she was 18. It was at that point when she legally changed her name to Felicity Smoak.  
“I wanted to hurt them,” she replied bluntly, “it was a vain attempt at separating me from them. Look how fucking well that turned out,” she laughed, gesturing around the room.

Oliver ran a hand over his short-trimmed hair, his nail tips scraping a path across his scalp. He had never felt guilt for returning a run away before. Often they were troubled – young kids who deep down wanted to go home, or criminals that deserved to be hauled back before a Judge, but Felicity was different. To Oliver she seemed intelligent and for the most part stable – her actions may not seem like it, but Oliver was convinced all those actions were a power play in the art of misdirection. Nothing about her was typical for him and that had him on edge about his role in this.

“Why do you drive everywhere, instead of fly?” Felicity asked, snapping Oliver back to the moment.  
“I didn’t say truth or dare,” Oliver replied, tapping his banded finger against the glass bottle.  
“Come on old man, you’d never go for dare,” Felicity laughed, sliding her body down onto her elbows, her legs still neatly crossed in a show of flexibility.  
“My parents died in a plane crash when I was 20, I’ve never been much for flying since then. Plus I couldn’t exactly keep you handcuffed on a plane,” he replied honestly.

He barely spoke of his parents, and certainly not to people he barely knew, but Felicity was different – in ways he could still not explain, she made he drop his guard in so many facets.

Felicity opened her mouth softly, toying with the words swirling around her brain. She closed it again, her teeth biting in against her bottom lip, finally she spoke, “I’m sorry,” she said softly and genuinely.

Oliver noted the softening in her eyes, this – he decided – was the real Felicity, the one she tried to hide in pink wigs and black clothes. The one she tried to discourage people from seeing with swear words and her middle finger. But, Oliver saw it. He saw it at the bridge and he saw it now in the hotel room. As to why she hid it, that was the mystery.

She felt his eyes lingering on her, not on her body, but on her own eyes, which for Felicity was an uncomfortable feeling.  
“Truth,” she quipped, stretching her body down on the floor to break the eye contact.  
“Why don’t you want to go back?”  
He watched her flinch at the question, her eyes blinking at a spot on the ceiling as she stretched her arms above her head, causing her tank top to slowly ride up exposing her navel and her milky white skin – Oliver was under no illusion, she had done that on purpose.

They sat silent as moments passed them by.  
“Would it make a difference?” she finally spoke, lifting her head sideways to meet his eyes with her own doe-eyed expression.  
“Would what make a difference?” Oliver questioned, his own eyes caught in the tractor beam of her clear blue ones.  
“If you knew why I didn’t want to do back, would you still take me back?” she replied, never blinking away from him, watching his brow as it folded in thought and his mouth as it pursed as he formulated an answer.

“Probably,” he replied.  
The truth was, whatever he thought of that Court order and whether or not he understood the reasons for it was irrelevant. If he didn’t bring her back, someone would. There was little choice in the matter – the decision wasn’t his to make.  
“Then why do you need me to answer it, wouldn’t it just make your job harder if you knew everything?”  
She lowered her head back to the ground, her eyes focusing on that one black spot on the white ceiling above her.

She made a point Oliver couldn’t disagree with. Perhaps he already knew too much.

 


	4. Louisiana Night; Texas Morning

Felicity starred at her reflection in the bespeckled glass of the motel’s bathroom mirror. She barely recognised the face it portrayed. She was so tired of the wall she kept up, so tired of the pretence. His questions had unnerved her, chipping away at her outer level, trying to find something underneath.

It had been years since anyone had tried to look past her skin. She controlled so much of what they saw, who she was and how much she would let them in. Hell she had spent a month wearing a black wig and calling herself Megan in Chicago, poor Conner had no idea until she stole $1k and left him a smeared lipstick kiss on the mirror as a goodbye note.

It hadn’t been personal, Felicity didn’t take pleasure in it, but it had been time to move on, and it became a case of needs must. She had made the money back on her way down to Florida and had sent him an anonymous money order, so he couldn’t still be mad. Megan would be just a passing memory.

But Oliver was not so easily distracted and she was finding it hard to maintain her guard. He asked questions he wanted to hear the answers for – answers she could not easily part with.

She splashed the tepid water across her face, letting it bead on her face before swiping a face cloth across it. Perhaps Oliver Queen would be the one to tell her story when she was gone – whatever form that took.

She thumbed through her hair as she willed her walls back up. She was so tired of the facade but it wasn’t time yet.

Oliver looked up from the couch when he heard the crack of the bathroom door lock. He caught her eyes when she appeared in the doorway, her lips in a forced smile her eyes a veil of sadness.

“My turn, truth or dare?” she smiled, running her delicate fingers down the embossed wallpaper as she dragged her fingers across the wall.

Oliver’s lips rolled over his words, his eyes searching across the room at her. Every miniscule movement she made seemed rehearsed, but every few seconds he saw glimpses of truth, flashes of honesty and the smallest flickering of reality.

He had met con-artists in his time, lousy ones and good ones – Felicity was neither. He had nothing to offer her, she could have left multiple times but she didn’t. It was abundantly clear she wanted control of this situation, but that appeared more for her benefit than to his detriment.

“Truth,” Oliver finally responded leaning his head back against the arm of the chair, his legs stretched across the rough brown suede fabric.  
“How much are they paying you?” she asked, folding herself onto the bed, her knees tucked in tightly to her chest, her eyes directly on his.  
“Not nearly enough with the shit you put me through,” he laughed, a smirk lingering on his face.  
A genuine smile broke across hers as she launched a pillow from the bed, catching him squarely in the face.  
“Oh, I see how it is,” he winked firing the same pillow back at her.

She ducked her head, the pillow missing it’s intended target and thumping hard against the wall above.  
“Your aim is fucking poor Queen,” she laughed, her hands playfully rolling down her hips.

He slid up, planting his feet on the floor in front of him. He could see another genuine facet of her personality peeking through her smiling eyes. It took him only a moment to appreciate just how breathtakingly beautiful it was, so was the case he didn’t even notice she had used his last name, information he had not, himself, provided to her.

He watched her fold a section of golden hair frivolously behind her ear as her fingertips glided across the seam of another pillow. His hand did the same dance across the aptly named throw pillow next to him on the couch. They were locked in a smiling game of who would fire first.

Felicity feathered her fingers on the pillow, her lips pouted in trepidation before she threw it directly at Oliver’s broad chest. He caught it with a grin, pouncing from the couch as he threw his own pillow, the one he’d caught still trapped in his grip.

Felicity laughed, vicariously jumping to her feet and scurrying across the bed to escape his advancement, gathering another pillow as she moved. Her swung pillow struck him across the face in a fit of unrestrained youthfulness. His swing caught her legs, knocking her balance off. She fell backwards into the soft embrace of the bed, her hair spilling around her head like a crown, her shirt lifted exposing her naval which shook with her unbridled giggling.

Without thinking Oliver, pillow still in hand, leapt onto the bed, his legs either side of hers, his body perched above her as he rained down a playful barrage of pillow strikes.

She whimsically squirmed underneath him, both of them embroiled in this impish display of childlike candour that they didn’t see what any third party might have – seen that despite the relatively short span of time they had known each other, there was an unexplained electricity between them, a spark just below the surface. But we all know what they say about sparks... they can warm a home, or burn down a village.

Felicity reached her hands up under his shirt, pinching against the sensitive skin on his sides. He buckled at the sensation, his body dropping to her side, his arms tangled up in her, rolling her to her side.

In a moment the laughter stopped, the room fell still and his blue eyes met her paled gaze. Her lips were soft and parted, the natural rouge of them glistening in dewy highlights. Oliver couldn’t avert his gaze from them, every breath she took was played out on them and he was caught in their spell.

Their lips were hovering close, warm breaths passing over the tiny bridge of air between them, Oliver was fighting every inclination he had, holding himself on the precipice, dancing the spark delicately on a shaky fingertip.

Felicity felt the palpitations of her heart heavy against her chest. The smoothness of his lips set against a backdrop of his unshaven face was beckoning her closer, like a moth caught in a light beam. She blinked away, her eyelashes casting a shadow across her soft cheeks.

_Control Felicity, that’s how you stop them from hurting you._

“Truth or dare?” Felicity spoke as her eyes steeled back open, her breath warm against Oliver’s neck, the sensation of it sending a ricochet through his torso.  
“Dare,” he responded, his body still skating dangerously close to her.  
He knew he should move, position a million things between him and the girl he knew would be like poison in his veins, but no matter how much his brain willed him away, his body wouldn’t move.  
“He chooses a dare,” she smiled, her teeth skating along the outside of her bottom lip.  
His breath was heavy, his eyes lidded as they watched her.

She blinked up at him, watching the soft line forming across his brow. Any other time, any other man she would have relished the lidded look in his eyes, but he was different and she was more fighting herself and her own control than him.

Her hand lightly peppered a touch across his cheek.  
“I dare you to sleep in the bed,” she paused on her next words, “and not touch me.”  
She slid under his arch arm across her chest, her soft hair tickling against his forearm before she sat up at the edge of the bed. Arching her neck over her shoulder she looked back towards him.  
_Don’t fall in love with me Oliver Queen, it won’t serve you well_ she spoke in an internal whisper, not a single word meeting Oliver’s ears.  
There was a depth in her warning, one she knew all too well.

She poised her hand atop her shoulder, brushing back the blonde locks that had tumbled forward. He watched her blink at nothing and hold her lips apart for a time, hovering over unspoken words.

Oliver, finally gathering his senses about him, realised how close he had come to stepping over a line he couldn’t come back from.  
“I think it’s best I stay on the couch.”  
He stood from the bed, running his thumb and forefinger down his jawline, bristling the hair around them.  
“Sleep in the bed Oliver, your shoulder will thank you for it,” she spoke genuinely, standing up off the bed, “I promise you’ll get no trouble from me,” a smile ambled across her face.

* * *

  
The light streaming through the gap in the curtains roused Felicity first. Dancing it’s imposing brightness orange against her lids. She breathed deeply, a sigh almost following at the end as she snuggled her head into the pillow, only the pillow was warm, slick and solid and it was breathing.

Her eyes sprung open, the sudden wrenching light causing her to strain against the shock as she looked down to discover her pillow was a man’s extremely well built chest. She blinked her trail across the shoulder and up the neck, stopping for a moment to see the Adams apple wave it’s path downward before rolling back up.

Two more blinks and Felicity was at the face, Oliver’s face be precise. His eyes were closed, his dark eyelashes heavy against his slightly tanned complexion. His mouth was relaxed, falling into a look that could almost be a smile. She soon became consciously aware his arm was around her, nestled under her neck with his thumb settled in the crook of her elbow.

It had been Oliver’s idea to build a pillow wall between them the night before, a notion which Felicity had spent close on 10 minutes laughing about. She peered over his slowly rising and falling chest and noted the cast off pillows were all on his side of the bed.

She felt his body wave softly against hers, his head burying further into her hair instinctively breathing in deeply the scent of it.

Although she was sure of her intuition, Felicity delicately lifted the blankets, peering down the bed – they were both still wearing pants, Oliver’s tented into a morning peak but still it was clear there had been nothing untoward happening in that bed.

She contemplated slipping out from his embrace and away from the warmth of his chest, but before the time came to make that decision, his body shifted next to her, he made a soft groaning yawn and his eyes flickered open.

She waited expectantly for the same realisation to come to him. It came in about 30 seconds.  
“Shit,” he cursed, yanking his arm up in a fluid motion, the force of it rolling him off the bed.  
“Doing okay down there boss?” Felicity smiled, leaning her head over the edge of the bed.  
Oliver sheepishly stood himself up, took three steps backwards from bed and timidly patted down his tented pants.

“I, I, what, I,” he stammered, “What happened?” he finally finished, his brain slowly waking up.  
“Well you were exceptionally gentle, we cried together afterwards,” Felicity smiled, sitting up in the bed, her legs tucked up to her chest.

Oliver looked bewildered, his mind trying to piece together memories that weren’t there.  
Felicity laughed jovially as she slipped out from under the covers and off the bed.  
“Relax Oliver, nothing happened, unless you’re working with something so small it’s undetectable,” she winked, folding a woollen sweatshirt over her singlet, “although I’m assuming that’s not the case,” her index finger slyly drew mid-air circles down towards his still very apparent morning boner.

She walked past him with a smile, a hand delicately tapping his shoulder “it seems you lost the dare though, you destroyed your own pillow wall” she nodded towards the pile of discarded pillows on his side of the bed before disappearing into the bathroom.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Oliver muttered under his breath as he set about rummaging through his bags for his clothes.

* * *

  
They had risen much later than Oliver had intended and it was nearing noon when they passed over the state line into Texas.

Felicity was lying across the backseat of the car, her bare feet waving in the passing wind.  
“Oliver, I’m bored,” Felicity sighed drawing a circle in the nape of his neck.  
He swatted her hand away, he was still unsettled by the ease at which he’d found her in his arms. Felicity was under his skin.

“Take the scenic route, come on, let’s visit rural Texas,” she playfully pleaded pointing at passing signs of an upcoming intersection, “come on Oliver, Jonesville might be fun, it’ll loop around,” she pouted against his neck.

Oliver should have just carried on the way he was going, the I 20 was smooth, clear and direct, but in a moment which Oliver knew he would probably regret, he turned the classic car onto a single-lane road heading for a town that it was likely time had forgotten about.

She clapped her hands together as she clambered back over to the front seat, much to his verbalized dismay.  
“Please stop climbing over the seats,” he sighed, a frown line prominent between his brows.  
“Are you still pissed about this morning?” she questioned, leaning up against the passenger door, her eyes honed in on him, watching the line between his brows as he subconsciously flexed and relaxed it.

Oliver shifted nervously in his seat, his hands gripping and releasing the steering wheel. Truth be told he was extremely flustered by that morning and virtually every hour that had preceded it. They should have been further along in their journey by now, her detours, unforeseen circumstances and his heavy mind had cost them time – but even more perplexing to him was that, despite all of that, he was heading on another time spending detour because _she_ asked to.

  
“Oliver, nothing happened, we cuddled, well you cuddled me,” she laughed jutting her toes into his side.  
“Enough,” he growled, swatting her foot away.

She folded her lips over each other, rolling them up towards her crinkled nose  
“You are pissed, are you afraid what the missus will think?” she replied, her eyes watching the heavy forest of trees on both sides of the road.  
“I told you I wasn’t married,” Oliver replied, his eyes slated forward, looking nowhere else.  
“You also said you didn’t have a kid, but,” she shrugged, “we both know that’s shit.”  
Her words garnered no response., in fact he didn’t even blink.  
“The photo in your wallet is your kid right? The one you said you didn’t have” her eyes returned to watching every passing expression that graced his face.

“Shit Felicity, is nothing off limits for you? My life is none of your concern.”  
His voice was raised, his tone irritated.  
“You seem pretty interested in mine,” she spat back.  
“That’s different.”  
“How?”  
“It just is,” he looked over at her, his annoyance at her intrusion written all over his face, “put your goddamn seat belt on.”  
She stared right back at him, not once blinking away as she reached behind her for the seat belt. Just a millisecond glance in front she saw the huge brown figure darting onto the road, right in their path.

“Oliver, watch out,” she screamed at the same time he saw the giant and majestic white-tailed deer directly in front of them.  
He pumped the brakes, but the tires locked against the pressure, sending the car in an uncontrolled skid. His father had always taught him to never pull against the skid as an action like that would flip the car, instead ride it out – so, as the back end of the car fishtailed in slow motion, Oliver gripped the wheel and turned into the forthcoming spin.

The wheels finally gained traction on the road, but not before the two left wheels caught the loose gravel on the shoulder of the road, distorting the path of the car and sending into careening into a shallow ditch.

In a cloud of smoke and the ungodly smell of burnt rubber the car halted without an impact. The deer looked up, oblivious to the causality it had just inflicted before it bolted off into the forest.

Oliver beat his palms against the steering wheel as he finally released his grip. He looked over at Felicity expecting some asinine quip, but instead she was laying slumped against the door, her hair a blonde splayed curtain over her face.

“Felicity?” Oliver breathed, his chest heavy from the tightening of the seat belt across it.  
“Felicity?” he repeated, more urgently as he fought to release his belt, which had locked into position.  
“Felicity?” a third time, as the belt finally released.  
His hand drew back her hair, revealing the large wound on her forehead just above her brow.  
“Felicity?” he yelled, his fingers pushing against her neck.  
He steadied his breathing as best he could to ensure he could feel her pulse against his two placed fingers.

He sighed feeling the steady and strong pulse beating up through her body. He leaned back into his seat and slowly took stock of the situation on the deserted back road – the surprisingly scenic route to a town he couldn’t even remember the name of.

He couldn’t help but laugh – not because there was any humour to be found in the situation, but rather due to the surging of emotion and adrenaline coursing through him.

“Fuck,” Felicity muttered as she slowly raised her head, her palm rested against her thumping forehead. “What the fuck is so funny?” she moaned before softly succumbing to a giggle of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have become best friends with Google Maps, but even the best of friends get things wrong sometimes, please excuse any errors I may make.
> 
> I'm not American, I will always spell it 'colour' - enjoy the change.
> 
> Would love to hear any comments, complaints or otherwise you may have....my compulsive nature demands I must reply to every one, so there's that ;)


	5. Texas Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have become best friends with Google Maps, but even the best of friends get things wrong sometimes, please excuse any errors I may make.
> 
> I'm not American, I will always spell it 'colour' - enjoy the change.

“I blame you for this,” Oliver muttered as he stepped from the car to survey the damage.  
“You would” Felicity replied, rummaging through the glove box for something to stem the bleed on her forehead.

Oliver crouched down in front of the white rimmed tire and sighed, the front was completely shredded and the back was flat. He had one spare, but that didn’t help much.

“We’re not going anywhere in this,” he concluded, swiping the dust from his stonewash denim jeans as he stood up.  
“I have no reception out here,” he sighed, checking the phone from his pocket.  
“So we walk?” Felicity asked holding a takeout serviette to her head.  
“Looks like it princess, you think you can manage?” he jested, grabbing his satchel from the back seat and folding it over his shoulder.  
“I think I can handle it,” she smirked as she bent herself over the seat to find her discarded Dr Martin boots.

Oliver knew he should look away but the further she leaned down the higher her denim shorts rode up, exposing the delicately soft skin of her very upper thigh and just a hint of the curve right before it rounded into a very pert butt cheek. He willed himself to look anywhere but there, cussing at his eyes for refusing to blink.

“See something you like?” Felicity laughed, twisting her head to catch the obvious line of sight he was courting.

Oliver looked away almost sheepishly as he rolled his foot in the gravel. He was like the kid who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he was sure his face was equally as red as he felt at that moment.

“It’s okay Oliver, I get it,” she smiled as she swung a small backpack over her shoulder and stepped from the car.  
“The town is that way,” Oliver pointed into the distance, past the line of trees on either side of the road, “I don’t think it’s too far.”

Felicity pulled her hair back into a pony tail, adjusted her shorts and rolled her neck till it clicked, “Ready for duty Sir,” she laughed before wincing her eyes back, realising that her forehead still hurt.  
“Fuck, that really hurts,” she pouted, her palm pressed against the forming bump under the gash, “I’m pretty sure I should sue you.”  
“I told you to put your seatbelt on,” Oliver shrugged, bending down to get a better view of her head.  
“Just wait here a minute,” he urged, heading back towards the car a few steps away.  
“Where the fuck would I go? The forest on the left or the right side of the road?” she laughed, before recoiling in pain once more.  
Oliver returned with a small first aid kit tucked under his arm, a bottle of saline solution already opened in his hands.  
“Sit,” he instructed, nodding towards the same ditch his beloved car was now slumped in.

Felicity perched on the edge of the ditch, her perfectly smooth legs tented into a triangle in front of her.

Oliver sat down next to her, placing the kit to the side of him as he poured the solution onto a cotton gauze, “this might sting a little,” he warned, brushing back the loose fray of hair from around her face.  
“First the handcuffs, now the infliction of pain. You have some interesting fantasies Oliver, or would you prefer I called you Mr Queen,” she smiled, dragging out the _Mr Queen_ in a outlandishly southern drawl.

Oliver rolled his eyes as a smile peeked across his face. He placed the gauze on the blood speckled wound, his face dubiously close to hers now, his mind harking back to the night before where – despite his inclination that it would only end badly – he had desperately wanted to kiss her.

The whole concept was ludicrous to him. He didn’t fall in love, he worked, he took care of his sister and he ran a business – he didn’t fall in love. Not since her. Not since that.

“FUCK ME,” Felicity yelped, the pain on her head was more intense then she was expecting, she turned to look at Oliver, his eyes a half breath away from her own “that wasn’t an invitation” she said with a practiced wink.

Oliver simply smiled in response, his mind still actively working through the thoughts coursing through him. He was thinking about her when his eyes caught the blue of Felicity’s. The afternoon sun was reflecting almost violet rays off them, like an Aurora-esk light display and everything else occupying his thoughts slipped away.

He rolled his lips smoothly over each other, his tongue slighting a peek through them – he was incredulous to the pull of them – he barely knew her, but she was taking over huge portions of his mind, like she was in his veins – impairing every fibre of restraint he possessed.

He blinked down, severing the connection between them.  
“It should be at least clean now, but you still should get that looked at,” he remarked, blotting the gauze away from her forehead.

“We should get walking” he continued, piling the solution and the now slightly bloodied gauze back into the kit, he would deal with that later.

He chucked it back in the backseat of the car and proceeded to fold up the soft top roof of the car, locking it in place along the windshield.  
“You’re quite fond of this car,” Felicity noted, brushing the dust from her shorts as she stood up off the ground.  
“I am,” Oliver replied simply – the truth was it was seeped in memories of his father, they had restored it together for years, since Oliver was 9, it had been a labour of love that hadn’t been finished when his parents were taken from this life.

Oliver had finished it alone.

“It holds memories for you, good ones, right?” Felicity said intuitively as Oliver strode ahead of her.  
“It does,” Oliver replied, his long legs making much larger strides than her.  
“Like the picture you keep,” Felicity replied, her hurried pace trying to match his.  
“I told you to mind your own business,” Oliver retorted, a swift annoyance in his tone.  
“Technically you said your life wasn’t my concern,” she smirked, her eyebrow raised.  
“Either way,” Oliver shrugged, taking two steps to her one – putting him a good 10 feet ahead.  
“You’re a closed book Oliver Queen, it’s no fun,” she called up towards him.  
“Keep up princess,” he called backwards, his tone playfully mocking with just a hint of frustration  
Felicity sighed, scuffing her shoes along the road.

“Can you at least tell me of this mysterious stop we’re making along the way?” she questioned, remembering the conversation from the first night she met him.  
“Vegas,” he replied casually, his face remaining focused ahead.  
“I love Vegas, let me loose on those slot machines,” Felicity sighed happily recounting the cacophony of lights and sounds Vegas offered.  
“You’ll be staying in the car, you’re not old enough,” Oliver rebuked, pulling a cap from his satchel and folding it onto his head to shield his eyes from the high sun.  
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud,” Felicity bemoaned, a full two strides behind him.  
“Don’t be a spoiled brat,” Oliver called over his shoulder, the trees the only witness to the bickering taking place.  
Felicity stopped and stooped down, the dust settling into the leather of her black boots as she collected a fallen pinecone from the grass shoulder.

She threw it, probably with more of a back hand than she intended to, hitting Oliver directly between his shoulder blades, the stiff leather jacket taking most of the impact.

He spun around and glared at Felicity who was standing with her arms across her chest.  
“Did you just throw a pinecone at me?” he mocked, spotting the ammunition on the ground between his feet.  
“You’re a wanker, you know that?” she retorted her lips twisting into an unamused pout.  
“What’s the matter Princess, not use to people telling you the truth?” he took a few more steps backwards, his eyes matching her glare.

“Tu peux embrasser mes fesses et tu avoir de la merde sur ta chaussure,” she smiled, her French flawless  
[*You can kiss my ass and you have shit on your shoe]  
Oliver stopped walking, his eyes still directed at her, “You just cussed me out in French didn’t you?”  
“Oui,” Felicity smirked, “I can cuss you out in three different languages,” she continued, kicking the gravel as she stepped forwards.  
“Remember I’m the spoilt debutante,” she was next to his shoulder now, leaning in closer to his ear, wisps of loose hair caught by the breeze were brushing against his jacketed shoulder, “and you Oliver still have merda sulla scarpa,” she finished, switching her dialect to Italian as she pointed down towards his feet.

Oliver shrugged oblivious to the meaning of her gesture, let alone her words. She was a few steps ahead of him now as she rolled her head over her shoulder, twisting her body slightly and taking another few steps forward.  
“You have shit on your shoe,” she laughed before turning her back on him, idly carrying on her saunter through the grass verge.

Oliver finally looked down and sure enough somewhere along the path he had stepped in shit, leaving large remnants of it on the side of his brown leather shoes.  
“Dammit,” he exclaimed, wiping the nasty brown muck on a grassed mound next to him.

“You couldn’t have warned me before I stepped in it?” he called out, buffering his shoe against the rough twisted grass roots.  
“I guess I could have, but I was too busy being spoilt and polishing my tiara. That’s all you think I have going for me right?” she called back as they almost reached the end of the seemingly never ending wooded canopy.  
The truth was she never saw him step into it, only the distinct mess of it afterwards.

She strained her eyes to the distance as he ran up to meet her, the shit now cleared from his shoe.  
“I think I see life” she announced, pointing and extended finger towards a not too distant building.  
“Finally,” Oliver sighed, looking down at his watch they had been walking for near on 30 minutes.

* * *

  
The General Store was like stepping back in time, the plaque on the bench outside proudly declared the store had been in operation since 1847. Old artefacts from bygone eras lined the walls, intermingled with deer heads and farming – or torture – devices – Felicity couldn’t quite decide which it was.

“Holy shit,” she gaped, looking across the collection of vintage sewing machines, the musty scent of old tanned leather coming from the saddles in the nearby corner.

An older lady with her greying hair tied back into a tight bun glared across the aisle at Felicity  
“Language,” Oliver hummed in her ear, tipping his cap to the older woman who nodded slightly and moved on.  
“What the fuck is this place?” Felicity gleamed, looking around in awe, “I need to live here.”  
“You need to watch your language,” Oliver glared down at her, but her wide-eyed look of wonderment drew a smile from his face.

“Can I help you folks?” a middle-aged man with a thick Texan accent questioned.  
Oliver noted the man’s eyes were immediately drawn to Felicity as she danced her finger tips across the table-top display of beautifully ornate glass kerosene lamps.  
“I don’t suppose there is a towing place around here somewhere, I blew a couple of tires down the road, I think the strut may be damaged on one of them.”  
“Ain’t no one around here like that,” he replied, his eyes, housed under bushy grey eyebrows, followed as Felicity moved slowly around the aisle.

Felicity was enamoured with the place, it was like walking into a grandparent’s home, filled with useless knick-knacks that Noah Kuttler would have hated but she loved it. The rows of well read books behind the counter reminded her of her mother, lying in the double bed of the tiny Vegas apartment, thumbing through a book she had found in some tiny market stall, telling Felicity that you didn’t need a lot of money in life ‘ _you just needed a lot of heart’_.

She had loved spending those precious moments with her mother before she was returned to the pomp and ceremony of being the daughter of one of the City’s wealthy elite. She remembered crying each and every time she was taken back to Starling – it felt almost ironic she was being taken back once more.

Felicity blinked up at Oliver who was doing his very poignant frowning face. She caught the eye of the shop owner, his eyes still very obviously trained on her. It was amusing how blatant he was being.

“See, we just need a ride to the nearest place that would have someone who could help us, where can we find someone like that?” Felicity pouted, trailing her finger across her cheek to brush wisps of hair behind her ear, her bottom lip gently snagged between her teeth.  
“Well I’m sure I could take you,” the older man replied, jostling his shoulders as he spoke.  
“I can, I can take you folks,” another, slightly younger man, sporting a rather impressive beard, spoke up from behind them.

“I have a car trailer, I’m sure I could take you,” another voice, belong to a younger still man wearing a red plaid shirt over his not so spotless white t-shirt.

Oliver was almost laughing at the fawning crowd she had drawn.  
“Fucking unbelievable,” he sighed under his breath.  
“Language Oliver,” Felicity leaned back to whisper in his ear.

* * *

  
Marshall was where they were heading now after collecting the car and – not as delicately as Oliver would have liked – strapping it onto the car trailer that was apparently used to tow Bob, or Billy, or Billy-Bob’s – Oliver couldn’t remember his name – demolition cars to nearby meets.

Oliver was sandwiched in the backseat of the ‘seen-better-days’ red pickup, in between a drooling farm dog that had taken a particular sheen to Oliver’s jacket, and three very impressive shot guns, hazardously propped up on the seat.

Felicity was in the front seat with the eager to impress farm boy who drove with one elbow propped up on the bench seat, like he was on some sort of high school romance excursion.  
“So what brings you folks here?” the grinning man-boy with the name that still escaped Oliver asked, as he shifted his weight towards Felicity.

“Oh Oliver here kidnapped me and sometimes keeps me handcuffed in his car,” Felicity replied nonchalantly, idly scratching her nose like she’d just told the dullest story.

Oliver couldn’t even choose how he should react to that, Billy-Bob whatever, was however completely taken aback by the comments and swung his wild eyes into the backseat, directly at Oliver.  
“She’s joking,” Oliver sighed, nodding Felicity towards Billy-Bob for her to calm the situation before Oliver had one of those very shiny guns pointed at him.  
“Totally, joking,” Felicity smiled, tracing a fingertip across the plaid pattern in the flannel shirt.  
“Good miss, because that’s no way to treat a lady.”  
Oliver groaned to himself and rolled his eyes at the dog, “you see what I’m working with,” he whispered, now slightly fond of the drooling mutt.

“You’re sweet,” Felicity smiled.  
Oliver was intrigued, she was barely being a step above nice to the guy, but it seemed pretty certain that if she asked, the sap would have handed over his wallet and the keys to his car.

“I reckon a man should always treat a lady with respect and kind hands,” he nodded to himself, tapping his dirt stained hands against the steering wheel.  
“Your momma must be very proud of you,” Felicity winked, catching Oliver’s glare from the backseat.

She shrugged at his slow head shake and raised an eyebrow to the frown building between his eyes. It was becoming apparent Oliver was just a smidge jealous.

The Pick Up pulled into a driveway with an oversized wrench as its sign post.  
“This is the best place to take your car mister, Doug here is a real good guy.”

* * *

  
The news was somewhat good and somewhat bad and Oliver was pacing the driveway with his hands roaming over his head debating what to do.

The strut in the front was slightly bent – Oliver could fix that with his eyes closed back home. To get Doug in Marshall to fix it could take up to a week – time Oliver didn’t have, but driving the distance they still had to go could make the damage worse.

“And to get the tires would take how long?” Oliver queried, still pacing as Felicity blew a bubble from the gum that one of the mechanics had eagerly offered her.  
“Well if I call it in now, I reckon we could have them down here and fitted tomorrow afternoon.”

 _Another detour, another lost day_  
“Fine, fine, let’s just do that, thanks man,” Oliver nodded, extending his hand to shake Doug’s.

Felicity felt an imposing presence wash over her as the same bearded man from the General Store walked up behind her, placing himself unbearably close to her. Oliver was discussing his beloved car just out of earshot and was oblivious to the look of trepidation that was rising on Felicity’s face.

She took two steps to the right and he took three, his hand coming to rest on the hem of her shorts. She slapped his hand away, but he replaced it with more force, his eyes bearing down at her.

Felicity stood up, a sudden wave of anxiety folding in on her. She rushed forward to Oliver, her arm looping into his, placing a kiss against his shoulder, her body huddled in tightly against him.

Oliver looked across at her and he was faced with a far version of Felicity that he had yet to witness – she was afraid. It was scribbled in the blue of her iris and etched into the arch of her brow, she was terrified.

Oliver looked around and finally over his broad shoulder where he met the sterling glare of the impressive beard owner seated where he last saw Felicity, it was not difficult for him to grasp the situation.

He ran a hand tenderly over her back, his eyes locked on the freakishly none faltering ones of the bear with the beard. Not content the subtle hint was enough for the grizzly to understand, Oliver wrapped both arms around Felicity, gently ushering her in front of him, ceremoniously placing himself between her and the leering Neanderthal.

“You alright honey?” he swooned, purposefully loud enough for grizzly to hear, before he brushed a scattering of hair away from her neck and softly placed a lingering kiss on it.

He had meant it only as a very blatant gesture to the leering idiot with the eager hands, but as he found his lips nuzzled into the heated crook of her neck, he couldn’t help himself stealing a few moments to enjoy the silken softness of her skin and the subtle hint of a lingering scent on her skin that he couldn’t quite place.

He felt her breathing, her body resting into his chest as she wrapped an arm around his stooped neck, toying delicately with the hair along his neckline  
“Just tired,” she replied to his question, in a voice that may or may not have carried to the ears of the idiot behind them.

“Is there a motel nearby?” Oliver asked Doug, the only male in the vicinity who didn’t seem to be having lascivious thoughts about Felicity – who was now astutely aware of it and desperate to leave.  
“There’s a bed and breakfast about half a mile down, the lady who owns it, she’s a retired nurse, you should get that bump seen to miss,” he smiled kindly, rubbing his hands through the grease towel looped through his belt.

“I can give you folks a lift?” grizzly spoke.  
Even without Felicity’s silent objections plastered in her eyes, Oliver would have turned it down.  
“We can walk,” Oliver replied sternly, taking Felicity’s backpack from her feet and slinging it across his own shoulder. He retrieved another bag from the car before handing the keys to Doug and thanking him. He deliberately and obviously took Felicity by the hand, placing a purposed kiss to her temple.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Olivier questioned when they were out of earshot, strolling down the historic main road, his hand still entwined with hers.  
“Yea, thanks,” she shrugged, her once exuberant smile replaced with a timid one that Oliver thought not befitting of her vivacious nature.

He had thought about bestowing a moment of jesting about her own lack of boundaries, but judging by her face Oliver considered it to be a bad idea, so he remained tight-lipped on the subject.

It took barely 6 minutes to walk the distance to the beautifully Victorian style house, painted crisp white with green window screens and accents. A wrought iron gate was quaintly opened to them, a tiled path taking them up to the spacious front porch and a welcoming doormat. Neither Oliver nor Felicity noticed that still they were locked in a handhold as a darling older woman met them at the door.

“You must be the couple Doug sent over, come in, come in,” she smiled, her rosy cheeks and soft plaited bun of hair adding to the glorious sweet old lady vibe she had going on.

Felicity stepped over the threshold first, her eyes dancing from the almost garish floral wallpaper to the lace doilies that were lovingly placed on every flat surface. It was so far removed from the stagnant motel rooms she had become accustomed to since leaving the sterile confines of Kuttler Mansion.

Felicity practically squeaked in a moment of excited candour over the eclectic interior.  
“I’m Beverly and you two can have the little cottage out the back,” she almost sang, dropping a key with an oversized key tag into Oliver’s hands.  
“You take the bags out love,” she patted his hand closed and directed him to the back door.  
“Now let’s take a look at that head of yours,” she smiled kindly back at Felicity.

Oliver left the house with a wink back at Felicity as Beverly led her to the solid oak dining table and ushered her into a matching chair with a quilted seat, a perfectly arranged first aid kit already laid out.  
“Does it still hurt?” Beverly questioned, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of her nose.  
“No its fine,” Felicity replied, cringing slightly as Beverly wiped an antiseptic across it.  
“Well the bump is a good sign dear, so you just make sure that man takes good care of you,” Beverly smiled folding a sheet of aspirin into Felicity’s palm.  
“Are you two married?” Beverly asked, with a soft smirk lifting on her lips.  
“Oh no, not that,” Felicity replied with a chuckle.  
“Well dear, I’m sure he want soon, you’re such a lovely looking couple,” she whimsically said as she walked around the table and into the kitchen.

Felicity crinkled her eyes at the response, trying to make sense of. She decided Beverly must have heard _not yet_ instead of _not that_ and she chuckled at the implications, but she opted not to correct dear sweet Beverly.

“Roger and I have been married 53 years, you’ll meet him later dear,” Beverly was idly talking as she switched the kettle on.  
“There is a certain look a man gets when he loves a woman,” she dropped teabags into two bone China teacups, despite not asking if Felicity wanted one.

“That strapping man has those eyes for you dear, you mark my words,” she nodded at Felicity as the kettle switched off, probably due to it having being boiled more than three times in the last ten minutes.

She poured the water, added a nip of milk and slid the cup over the breakfast bar to Felicity.  
“Sugar is in the bowl there dear,” she nodded towards a nearby matching set of red rose patterned China

Felicity slid into one of the chairs taking the cup into her hands with a thankful grin. This place felt remarkably like a home should feel.

* * *

  
It was after 6pm when Felicity sauntered into the cottage and found Oliver midway through a telephone call. He held his finger up to her, gesturing her silence for a little longer.

“Just make the call Digg, I’ll be a couple of days later then expected.”  
Oliver padded around the room nodding.  
“Send Roy to collect that one, he shouldn’t get much trouble.”  
More nodding.  
“Okay man, thanks, bye.”  
Oliver ended the phone call with a furrowed brow.

“Everything okay?” Felicity asked, rolling her hands over each other as she wandered around the beautifully vintage self contained cottage.  
“Just business. Head okay?” Oliver queried as he thumbed through some papers on the bed  
“Mmhmm,” Felicity hummed, watching Oliver with lidded eyes.

There was something in the way he had helped after the accident, protected her when the grizzly got uncomfortably grabby and there was definitely something in what Beverly had said.

She watched him tap a pen in his hand as he pushed up the sleeves of his white t-shirt up over his elbows and slumped down on the edge of the quilted blanket near the foot of the white vintage bed. Felicity felt something she couldn’t explain, something she couldn’t rationalize. She just felt _something_.

The spark.

She swallowed a brimming feeling of apprehension, for once Felicity wasn’t thinking five steps ahead, she wasn’t considering what she needed to gain and she had no desire to control something.

Without forethought she took the five steps forward to close the gap between them. In a fluid motion she took one more step between his legs, took his head between her hands and swept up his lips onto hers. Her eyes screwed shut, desperate to relish a moment where there didn’t have to be a reason.

Oliver had imagined what her lips would taste like. Every time they turned up at the corners to smirk at him he had fanaticised about how soft they would be. But this moment of realisation was bittersweet - Felicity was complicated, what she did was about control. He couldn’t allow himself to be swept up in that.

His palms landed gently against her slender shoulders cupping over them before he lightly drove them backwards, breaking the embrace her lips had over his.

She felt the touch of his hands the same time she felt them guide her backwards. Severing the kiss she had offered without strings.

The spark faltered.

“What are you doing?” Oliver breathed, his words awash with confusion.  
Felicity swallowed down the painful realisation that she had been alone in her feelings and that she had acted out of turn.

A practiced smile followed a shrug.  
“Just in case Beverly was watching, thought we’d give her a show,” she chuckled – masking the avalanche of emotion that was threatening her fragile façade.

She smiled again, her best performance yet, as she brushed hair from her cheek – a moment of mirroring the sensation of a tear that sat on the verge.  
“Actually, I left something inside, I’ll be right back,” she lied, blinking back the tears as she turned away from him.

The spark was one sided.

Oliver watched her leave, internally debating whether he should follow her or not. He couldn’t see her angle, couldn’t understand what game she was playing this time.

He growled his frustration, pushing the papers irately to the floor. His palms firmed against his temples – his head a rush of scrambled thoughts.

* * *

  
“So fucking stupid,” she chastised herself as she instinctively wrapped her arms around her body for comfort.

It had been foolish of her to take that risk – to make that move, and now she would be grateful if the ground opened up and took her from this moment.

She needed a drink, and not the tea Beverly would offer her. She pulled the pale pink knitted cardigan tightly around her body as a faint misting of rain began, mimicking her emotional state.

She walked through the iron gate and debated left or right – she settled on left.

* * *

  
Oliver couldn’t concentrate, the last 10 minutes he had sat in the same spot on the bed, staring at the faintest tear in the wallpaper under the window in front of him.

Felicity had nothing to gain from that kiss, there was nothing to control about the situation. She had made no smart remark, not veiled innuendo. Nothing about it fit with what he’d come to know of her.

 _Unless_  
The thought struck him like a pendulum of a grandfather clock – on target and without restraint – maybe she had no reason at all, maybe she acted on real, honest impulse. Maybe, she meant it.

* * *

  
Felicity stepped into the quintessential Texan bar and breathed in the distinctive scent of beer and barbeque sauce. The polished red wood bar stools were resident to least five carbon copy bikers, staring blankly ahead of them and dribbling beer foam into their coarse beards as they drunk.

Rowdy frat boys played darts in the corner, already well into the swing of things, despite the fact it was barely evening.

She had made a mistake kissing Oliver and she was desperate to remove the feeling in the pit of her stomach the only way she knew how.

She strode over to the group of frat boys and took a seat next to one of them, who looked over at her, surprised.  
“So, which one of you boys is buying me the first drink?” she hustled, staring at an invisible speck on her nail.

* * *

  
It was another quiet 10 minutes of Oliver reflecting on the possibility that she could have meant it, and then it was another 10 minutes of Oliver trying to decide what he should do about it.

Still another 10 minutes flittered by like seconds before Oliver realised Felicity had been gone for almost an hour.

He went inside first, finding Beverly and her equally as kindly husband in the midst of their ritualistic evening chatter as they did the dinner dishes together – they had not seen Felicity.

He jogged back outside to the street frontage as the misted rain decided to amp it up, fuller drops now sporadically falling from the sky bouncing off Oliver’s jacket.

He looked left and right, trying to decide which way to go. He went right.

* * *

  
Three drinks later Felicity was standing poised in front of the taped line on the floor, pinching the dart between her thumb and forefinger taking her aim at the red and black board in front.

Short frat with the broad shoulders and crewcut was hovering close behind her. Felicity could feel his heavy breath on her misted skin. The thought of him repulsed her and the alcohol was doing little to dull her thoughts of Oliver.

* * *

 

Oliver stopped mid stride, thinking back to the short walk they had taken to the B&B, Felicity had commented on a bar they had walked past, asking Oliver if they could go there, betting him the first drink that there were at least parts of 5 dead animals on the walls inside.

He had accepted the wager.

He turned on his heels and ran the opposite direction, towards the quintessential Texan bar.

* * *

  
Felicity recoiled at the way his hands glided under her t-shirt, skimming the waistband of her shorts. It appeared crewcut with the broad shoulders was claiming her in front of his buddies.

She was almost numb to the attention and soon she would retreat behind her walls. The place where her body became an empty husk, where she didn’t think about it, where she wouldn’t look at their eyes and wouldn’t let them taste her lips. Those things were reserved for something more than meaningless sex. She wouldn’t give them those parts of her.

But something was different tonight.  
She wanted something more.  
She wanted something real.

“I’m sorry boys, I’m calling it a night. You’ve been great company,” she smiled, sliding crewcut’s hands away from her waist, “I appreciate the distraction, but I best be leaving.”  
She was trying to be nice about it, trying to leave on a kind note, but crewcut was at least 6 drinks ahead of her and he was not giving up that easily.

“The party has only just started,” he grinned, reaching his hand around her again.  
“I really have to go,” she replied, her smile becoming fainter as she side stepped his advances.  
“Come on, stay,”  
Another hand reached out, holding on to her wrist.

Felicity yanked her wrist away. Her pleasantries were all but spent when a wet Oliver pushed crewcut down into one of the chairs with a steeled look on his face.

“Stay down,”Oliver hissed, his hand reaching for Felicity’s.  
She took it and without another word he walked her back outside.

He stopped under the eaves of the building as the heavens opened up and the once spotted showers became torrential.  
“I didn’t need rescuing Oliver,” she spoke quietly, pulling her hand from his grip.  
“What was that?” he demanded, combing his fingers through his hair, a scattering of water flicking from each strand.  
“What was what?” she replied, the rain lashing down against the paved ground in front of her.  
“What you did,” he paused, his voice loud enough to carry over the sound of the rain, “when you kissed me. What was that?”  
Felicity shrugged, turning her face away, secretly begging him to leave off his line of questioning.  
“Felicity, look at me,” his hand swiped against her shoulder, but she jostled it away.

She couldn’t do this with him right now, she couldn’t do this with herself.

She stepped out from under the eaves, the sudden impact of the frigid and teeming rain sending a sharp jolt down her spine.  
“It was nothing Oliver, it was just me, being me. Fucked up,” she called back towards him, the rain immediately blanketing her and gluing the fabric of her shirt to her body.

She turned around, taking hurried steps back towards their lodging, again hoping for the ground to swallow her up somewhere along the way.

Oliver followed her into the rain, his jacket now providing little in the way of protection against the icy deluge.  
“Tell me the truth, why did you do it?” Oliver pressed, stepping in front of her path.  
She shook her head, droplets of rain mixing in against the tears she felt forming.  
“What game were you playing?” he continued as she pushed past his shoulder, desperate to make an escape.  
“I wasn’t playing a game Oliver, fuck,” she cursed, turning to face him, the angst written in her eyes, “Fuck” she cursed again, louder and towards the sky.

She turned her head, they were a foot away from the welcoming gate of the B&B, but she didn’t want to be there either.

Oliver’s breath fogged in the veil of rain. His lips parted, his brain working its cogs over what she was saying and what he was feeling.

He looked at her, barely a foot away, her eyelash blinking away tears or rain – he couldn’t tell. Her peached lips full and parted, glossed under the lacquered rain. Her once free and billowing wisps of hair now darkened and clinging to the side of her face, spiralling beads of water down them.

Then the cogs stopped turning. He stopped factoring in outcomes and stopped weighing up options.

His hand curved over her face, his fingers lacing in the folds of her hair, his thumb brushing up against the slick silk finish of her wet cheek.

She started to speak, but her words were lost as his lips charged against hers. The pressure was intense and rapid. His rain stained lips caressing hers with a vivid desperation. Cascades of water ran tracks down their faces and around their tangled lips like rivers parting around them.

There was no time to digest the sensation of her lips on his, no time for him to recognise the taste of the chapstick she wore or appreciate the delicate scent of her smooth creamy skin.

This wasn’t a kiss that allowed for the mind to wander into such simple notions, it was kiss that demanded ones full attention – heated despite the frigid water, needy but not rushed and unrestrained but not without intent.

His lips encased her top lip, splaying out over her cupids bow as his hand held her head, plunging her lips deeper into his.

Her hands stayed motionless, trapped against her sides as her entire body focused in around the sensation of his mesmerising lips. It was intense and new but at the same time it felt like it was something she had waited a lifetime to feel. She had never felt a moment like this, never understood when people spoke of a kiss that they could melt into, but now she understood – this was her moment.

Breathless and spent, their lips parted, poised a hair width apart, droplets heated in the warmth of their breaths, his hand still in place against her sodden cheek. She glided her hand up his arm, matching his hand palm for palm, guiding his hand down from its place against her face. She swallowed down whatever worrisome thoughts that might stop her next decision as she took his hand in hers and led him down the back path to the cottage, their footsteps hurried through the mounting puddles.

They fell against the door, sheltered from the rain under the sheeted canopy above. She blinked up at him, looking in the river blue of his eyes for the first time since leaving the bar. She thought about words to say, things he should know but she couldn’t part with them – desperate just to feel like none of that mattered to her.

She rose her body up on the highest tippy toe she could manage, almost equalling her lips with his. Her arms, finally aware of themselves, wrapped around his neck as he stooped in, their lips once again meeting but with a slower, more paced caress.

It was then he noticed the sweet taste of strawberries on her lips, despite the water that was still beaded on them, her lips were succulent and sweet.

It was then she noticed the slight graze of his scruff across her chin, like the bristles of the softest baby brush tickling against her.

He fumbled with the door behind them until it gave way, leaving them to stumble in the door, their lips still passionately entwined.

She slipped the drenched cardigan from her shoulders causing it to land with a faint splosh to the tiled floor behind her. Their lips separated, allowing them to catch their breath once more. He went to speak this time, tripping of words and stumbling over thoughts.

“Felicity, are you-,“ was all he managed before she answered his question by raising the hem of her weighted t-shirt, the water from it pooling in her grip.  
He mirrored her hands on the hem of it, cast off misting from it as together they lifted it from her body.

Oliver slipped off his jacket and folded his own dripping t-shirt over his head in a swift motion, unbothered by the scattering of droplets that the motion sprayed across them.

He kissed her again, his hands smoothing down her back, riding the velvet texture of her damp skin all as they twisted a path to the nearby bed.

Felicity fell into the quilted softness of the bed, her tangled pony tail now barely held together, her hair a wave around her shoulders. She moved up the bed, her body angled across it as Oliver hovered above her, his legs parked either side of her, his sodden denim jeans clinging to each muscle in his legs.

He looked at her, watched the remnant water form tiny puddles in each pore across her shoulders – she was easily the prettiest girl he had seen.

His mouth lingered just above the skin on her neck, his nose gently nuzzling in before his lips touched against it, soft and warm. Slowly kissing away the formed droplets caught in her collarbone.

Felicity hummed softly, her body gently writhing under his, eager to be close. Her hands skated around the curve of his broad shoulders before she allowed just her fingertips to trickle over each rippled valley on his chest.

The feeling of him was euphoric, each light sensation a part of his body made against hers swelled emotion inside her. She wanted to be loved.

 _Only_ –  
She fought back against the growing panic inside. She screwed her eyes closed willing her thoughts to vanquish, to just leave her be, but that did nothing to help. She felt her body wavering, her heartbeat pounding in her chest and she couldn’t stop it.

She pleaded with herself to let it go and begged her mind to not go there. She was not that girl again. She was not afraid of sex.

 _Only_ –  
This wasn’t just sex.

As his lips melded with hers again, Oliver oblivious to the trepidation forming under her skin, she realised this was intimacy.

She was terrified of intimacy.  
Intimacy was devoid of control.

She felt years of walled up emotions bearing down on her threatening to spew out every memory and every feeling.  
She saw him. She felt him. She recoiled at him.

 _No_ she pleaded with herself, her breath laboured and her eyes welling up.

As Oliver rose off her, he saw the look in her eyes he had seen hours before. She was terrified.  
“Felicity?”  
She snapped her head to him, unable to speak, unable to move.  
“No,” she cried, slipping out from underneath him.

Her legs were like jelly, but they carried her quickly to the bathroom where she fell against the back of the door, desperate to try and catch her breath and steady her erratic heart.

She reached for the shower, turning it to its hottest point. She waited barely 30 seconds before she stepped into the water, still in her drenched shorts and black bra, and slid down the shower wall, a crumpled heap of emotions.

The water heated up around her, filling the room with steam and causing red spots to burn across her back as she sat curved over her knees staring at a blank spot in front of her.

Oliver stood poised with his fist an inch away from the bathroom door unsure if he should knock or retreat.

She was terrified.  
She was terrified of him.

He scraped his hands across his scalp, recounting each movement to try and find where he had stumbled, where he had misread the signs and gone to a place she wasn’t comfortable.

But all in all that was irrelevant, he had stepped over a line that he himself had drawn.

He waited 5 minutes before he knocked.  
She didn’t answer.  
He knocked again.  
Silence.  
“Felicity, please, I’m sorry.”  
Nothing.  
“Felicity, just tell me you’re alright.”  
Nothing.  
“Shit,” he murmured under his breath.

He knew of her time at the institute, he couldn’t just leave her in.  
“Felicity, I’m coming in, okay?”  
She never replied.

He opened the unlocked door, a wave of hot steam rushed him. The air was heavy and he could barely see his hand in front of his body until the steam dispersed into the bedroom, and that’s when he saw her, exactly where she had fallen, at the bottom of the scolding shower, still in her clothes, deathly still and staring at nothing.

He saw the red water blisters across her back and when his hand ventured under the water he knew the reason for them.

He shut off the water and she didn’t even blink.  
He grabbed a towel from the rail behind and wrapped it over her now shivering body.  
“Felicity?” he whispered softly, as though talking to a scared child.  
She finally registered him, blinking her eyes up at him. Her lips parted as if she was going to speak, but no words came.

If Oliver had to sum up the way she looked to him in one word, it would be broken.  
She looked _broken_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to hear what you think, this particular chapter was taxing to my feels for various reasons.
> 
> Like the tags suggest this story will turn dark in places, please be aware of this. 
> 
> Xox


	6. Texas Goodbye

“Felicity, I’m going to call some help okay?” Oliver soothed, unsure what the situation required.  
He sat crouched beside her waiting for an answer, or at least some recognition that he was even talking, but she was just staring at him, or maybe through him, with parted lips and hooded eyes, blinking only when a lost water drop trailed across her brow.

Oliver didn’t know what to do, all he knew was that he was way out of his depth. He went to stand up when she grabbed his wrist.  
“Please don’t, I’m fine, it’s nothing,” she replied, trying to force out a smile, but failing.  
“Felicity, not to sound dramatic, but this isn’t nothing” Oliver sighed.  
He wanted to touch her, to hold her in an embrace but he was dubious as whether that would make things better or worse.

“I just drunk too much, I was feeling a little sick, I’m sorry,” she lied, brushing her wet hair back from her face and hugging the towel tightly across her body.  
“Felicity,” he breathed her name through partially closed lips, hidden under heavy eyes.  
“Please Oliver, just let me get dressed, please,” her voice was soft, hesitant and her eyes were wide and pleading.

Oliver nodded as he stood up, her arm slipping from around his wrist. He was torn. In the large scheme of things, he barely knew her and there were others that had known her longer, ones that could help her – only the idea of it made him uneasy.

He left the bathroom, watching her with drawn eyes, returning moments later with her bag.

She nodded her thanks as he placed it on the floor and reached down a new, dry, towel from a shelf on the wall.

He left the bathroom again, leaving the door slightly ajar to afford her some privacy, but also to allow him to keep one ear on the situation behind it.

Oliver finally realised he was still in his dank jeans that felt pasted to his legs. Watching the bathroom door intently he peeled them down his leg, the denim fabric practically sloshing with each shift. He retrieved clean briefs and sweatpants and hurriedly dressed, conscious that Felicity could enter the room at any given moment.

Folding a clean, dry t-shirt over his body he decided to make a call. It was for the best. She would be mad, foul-mouthed mad, but she would be safe. He ran a hand down his jaw, squeezing in against itself when it reached his chin.

It was for the best.

The call was concise and instructive. There was no other choice to make.

* * *

  
Felicity pared off her clothes, catching her reflection in the mirror she saw the red spots slowly fading on her back. In a moment of clarity she frowned at herself. It had been so long since she had been taken over with a panic attack, but then she had never allowed anyone to touch her in the way Oliver had.

Her fingertips drew a line across her collarbone, tracing where his lips had left a delicate trail all but washed away now. Oliver was different, she had _wanted_ his hands to touch her. She had _wanted_ to feel him encasing her, kissing her. She had wanted to give herself to him, to feel free from her demons and to relinquish the control but she hadn’t been able to. He had opened her heart, the one she had walled off, and with that came everything else. With that came the flood.

She dressed slowly, choosing sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt that swamped her slender frame. Her hair was damp even after she ran a towel over it so she pulled it back and wrapped it into a messy bun just below her crown.

Timidly she opened the bathroom door with a listless squeak of the hinge. Oliver looked up from the armchair he had slumped into after he had hung up the phone, and there he had stayed until now.

“Hey,” he said softly raising to his feet.  
“Hey,” she smiled back, it was a genuine smile but it was faint, only a flicker.

Oliver went to speak, but Felicity took a step towards him and started.  
“I’m sorry about that, I guess I had more to drink at the bar then I realised. I just felt sick, you know? And then, it was silly, I got cold, so I just jumped in the shower. I’m sorry, I must have looked like a crazy lady,” she lied through a veiled chuckle.  
Oliver wasn’t silly, he could see right through the lies she was spouting, but this wasn’t the time to push her, so he replied with a simple nod and an, “Mmm hmm.”

“I’m sorry, really, it’s my fault,” she repeated, mustering up each word slowly.  
“You have nothing to apologise for. You didn’t nothing wrong, I did,” Oliver replied calmly and directly. He accepted his role.

“No, no, it wasn’t you,” she said honestly, closing the gap between them, her hands moving to touch him, but thinking better of it and retreating to her sides.  
“Please Oliver, just know you didn’t do anything I wasn’t party to. It was just a silly Felicity moment.”  
He saw glimmers of honesty in her eyes but masked behind walls of something else.

But he wouldn’t push. Not tonight, and it wouldn’t matter come tomorrow.  
“Beverly brought us some dinner, it’s on the table. You should eat, she was quite insistent about it,” Oliver said pointing to the foil covered plates sitting on the table.

Felicity nodded and padded over to the table, slinking into the wicker chair.

They ate in virtual silence, neither knowing how to use words to smooth over the gorge that was opened up between them.

Felicity ached to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t.  
Oliver wanted to tell Felicity goodbye, but he couldn’t.

* * *

  
Night time engulfed them, Felicity curled into the covers of the bed, Oliver awkwardly splayed on the armchair.

He had stayed awake sometime longer than her, watching her sleep, wishing he could take the pain she clearly carried, away from her. But that wasn’t his job, wasn’t his place.

* * *

  
Felicity sighed into the soft down feather pillow, her legs stretched out between the warm linen that smelt like lavender fabric softener.

She always walked a tightrope in her dreams, sometimes they were filled with carefree moments by a beach, her toes dug into the white sand of a West Coast beach, salted wind lapping against her face and nothing required from her. The other times the night was dark, full of things she would rather forget, the smell of moth balls, a neon sign that flickered a waving figure and a heavy weight on her chest.

Those nights she avoided sleep, preferring restless roaming over returning to a past that always ended the same.

But today she woke from a restful slumber filled with moments that didn’t have to be about anything.

Oliver was already awake when her eyes flickered open, allowing the mid morning sun to dance happily across her vision.

He had watched her sleep, noticed her lips fold over dreams and her body curl into itself, trying to convince himself he was making the right call.

“Morning,” she yawned, blinking her eyes to adjust to the morning light.  
“Beverly brought you tea, I didn’t peg you as a tea drinker,” Oliver smiled, nodding towards the matching saucer and cup he’d placed beside the bed only a few minutes earlier.  
“I’m not really,” Felicity replied, sitting up in the bed, her legs tented in the sheet, “but I don’t think that would matter to Beverly,” she smiled, feeling the warmth of the cup spreading across her palms and she held it in her hands.

“Doug rung, the car will be ready in about an hour,” Oliver said, twisting the baked eggs idly around his fork  
“I should get dressed then,” she smiled, slipping out from under the covers and placing the tea cup back on its pristine matching saucer.  
“Felicity we need to talk,” Oliver said grimly, his chin buried into his chest.

Felicity nervously dug her toes into the carpet underfoot, her eyes apprehensively giving Oliver a fleeting look.  
“After, okay,” she smiled widely, hiding her trepidation behind it as she took a piece of toast from his plate.

She had made the decision to trust him. She would tell him the truth.

He went to say more, to tell her the importance of what was about to happen. He wanted to reassure her while it was just them, that this was for the best, but as she slinked into the bathroom, he simply watched her – his mouth devoid of words.

Felicity breathed as she slowly closed her eyes, steading her frightful nerves and willing herself to find the right words to say. She looked over to the shower and felt a pang of regret at letting herself falter like she had last night.

“You can trust him, you can trust yourself,” she whispered, the sound barely making it past her lips as she opened her eyes to her own reflection in the mirror.

She didn’t know what he would do with the information and she had played different reactions over in her head. Some had ended badly and some had ended on a white sandy beach with him sitting beside her telling her she was okay.

Whichever way it landed she would cope with, but the truth was burning a hole through her and she didn’t want to be alone with it anymore.

She dressed simple, black jeans and white strapless tunic top she would throw a sweater over outside. She raked her fingers through her hair, the natural wave of it full after sleeping with it damp. She tousled out the knots and readied herself.

Oliver looked up from the plate as a knock on the door echoed through the cottage. He would ask for more time, he didn’t want Felicity to leave like this, he didn’t want her to feel ambushed.

He opened the door and was met with a tired, but familiar face.  
“Dig, can you wait outside, I just need a few more minutes to explain the situation,” Oliver spoke quietly, anxiously aware Felicity could be within earshot.

  
“Who’s that?” Felicity asked, stepping from the bathroom, her bag slung over her bare shoulder  
Oliver sighed, too late.  
“Felicity, this is John Diggle, he works for me,” Oliver explained, stepping back from the door as John stepped in, dutifully aware his boss’ plans had now changed and he wasn’t required to wait outside anymore.  
John took a step forward, his arm outstretched, “Nice to meet you Felicity.”

Dubiously she took his hand, placing her backpack onto the armchair.  
Oliver steadied his arms across his chest and took a breath _he had made the right call._  
“John is going to take you to Dallas, he’ll fly with you back to Starling.”

Felicity’s head snapped towards Oliver, a startled look of confusion set in her eyes.  
“I don’t understand,” she responded, her eyes tracked directly onto Oliver.  
He blinked away from her stare.  
“I still have days left in the trip, it will be better this way,” he spoke calmly, his hands trenched in the pockets of his pants.  
Felicity took a step towards him, a heavy lump in her throat brimming against her best intentions.

“No, I don’t know him,” she shook her head with each word before quickly glancing at John, “no offence,” she pointedly said.  
“None taken,” John nodded, his arms casually folded over each other, his body indirectly blocking the door out of a force of habit  
“Felicity, you didn’t know me either,” Oliver made a gripped fist in his pocket, refuting the desire to run it down her arm.

She closed the distance between them, her eyes searching wide-eyed through his.  
“Oliver please, I want to go with you. I’m sorry about last night, it won’t happen again, please,” she was almost pleading, feeling the loss of control like a lightening rod through her body.

Oliver couldn’t quash the instinct anymore. His hand softly stroked her arm, coming to rest just above her elbow. His eyes danced across her face, perhaps afraid of staying too long at one place.

“You have nothing to apologise for, you did nothing wrong Felicity, _nothing,_ ” on the last word his eyes finally set on hers.  
“I know it was my fault, it always is, it always was, but I can’t go back there right now, please Oliver,” tears forming behind her eyes blurred across her vision before she blinked them away, sending them trickling down her naturally peached cheeks.

“It’s not your fault, its mine. I overstepped a boundary and I don’t want to hurt you” he spoke in a hushed tone, his words for her benefit alone.  
Despite his every logical inclination to the contrary, he had fallen for this girl and he was decidedly afraid of where that would lead them.

 _I wanna love you but I better not touch_  
_I wanna hold you but my senses tell me to stop_  
_I wanna kiss you but I want it too much_

She wanted to plead with him, beg him to not send her away. She wanted to tell him everything, she wanted to....but she didn’t, she couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come out.  
“Please don’t,” was all she could manage.  
“This is for the best Felicity.”  
He didn’t even register that his hand had left her arm and was gently balanced on her cheek, not until John coughed loudly beside him.

“I thought you were different,” her words were barely above a whisper, but Oliver heard them, each syllable and each inference.

Felicity took a black jersey from her bag and silently pulled it over her strapless top. She stole another look at Oliver before she slid a slouch beanie over her loose blonde hair and tugged the zipper of the bag closed.

She followed John out to the waiting rental car. It would be just over 2 hours to Dallas and from there a seemingly short two hour flight back to a world she detested.

Oliver expected some snide remark a jovial fingered gesture from her – but she gave him nothing but a blinked glance; and he was still trying to convince himself this had been the right call to make.

* * *

  
Oliver collected the car just after 11am and started back on the journey alone. He was determined to bid farewell to Texas before he stopped somewhere for the night. The journey across the state line into New Mexico would take him almost 9 hours, but he felt the need to wipe the Texan dust from his shoes before he slept and the array of snacks he’d piled into the car before he left would help.

He was only an hour and a half into the journey when he saw something on the side of the I20, just outside the speck on the map, Canton.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Oliver gaped to the empty car.  
He signalled and pulled the car over into the shoulder, the gravel cracking underneath as he slowed to a stop.  
“You stop for hitchhikers too?” Felicity smiled, the breeze catching her hair like a scarf around her neck.  
“Where is Dig?” Oliver questioned, rummaging through the glove box in search of his phone he’d discarded in there hours before.  
“I didn’t hurt him, if that’s what you’re asking,” she shrugged.

Oliver found his phone, the screen was lit up with notifications like ornaments on a Christmas tree, 12 missed calls, 4 voicemail messages.

 **[First voicemail]**  
_Oliver, your girl is a talker, she’s spent the last 30 minutes telling me the purposes of periods, I didn’t need to know that shit man. Anyway she’s in the bathroom, she made me stop just outside of Dallas, just checking in with you. We’ll be in Dallas in about 20 minutes._

 **[Second voicemail]**  
_She’s been in the bathroom for 30 minutes bro. Do I go in there? Yea, okay, I’m going to go check, this message is in case we get a complaint about me going in the women’s bathroom._

 **[Third voicemail]**  
_Shit, she’s gone man. There’s a note on the bathroom mirror written in lipstick saying it’s nothing personal but I’m not really her type, what the fuck man?_  
The message was silent for a moment, background noise, the slamming of a door, then the rush of the wind against the tiny microphone as he’d gone outside.  
_You have got to be kidding me, she took the wheel off the car. I got the wheel, but I got no lugs, who the hell is this girl? Shit, I’ll call you back_

Oliver looked up at Felicity who held out an open hand, four wheel lugs sitting in her palm.

 **[Fourth message: 30 minutes later]**  
_I got the wheel back on man, but seriously Oliver, call me back._

“I go with you or I disappear,” Felicity said calmly, the resolve in her voice very clear.  
Oliver sensed this was a battle he was not going to win – and maybe, he didn’t want to.

He nodded her towards the passenger seat and she clambered in, settling her bag into the backseat.  
“Good choice,” she winked as he shook his head and dialled his phone.

“Oliver? I’m sorry boss, I don’t know where she went,” John answered after the second ring, Oliver placing him on speaker phone.  
“Hi John, I’m super sorry, it’s nothing personal,” Felicity spoke.  
“She’s there, you found her?” John replied, the gruffness in his voice was at a level nine.  
“Technically I found him, but that’s just semantics,” Felicity smirked.  
“She’s going to ride back with me. Just get on your flight, I’ll see you in a few days,” Oliver instructed.  
“Are you sure that’s a good idea boss?”  
Oliver’s lips rolled over John’s question, ruminating an answer as he took the call off speaker and held the phone to his ear.  
“It’s fine Dig, I have this sorted.  
“Not everyone can be saved man,” John sighed, knowing where his friend was coming from.  
“This isn’t like this,” Oliver replied simply, his eyes stealing looks at Felicity who was busy pulling the seatbelt across her chest.  
“You tell me this isn’t you trying to rewrite history, trying to save this one because you couldn’t save...,“  
“Dig, enough” Oliver interrupted “that’s not what this is. I’m finishing the job I started. I’ll see you in a few days.”  
“Alright man, you’re the boss,” John sighed, Oliver could almost imagine his heading shaking softly as he said each word.

Oliver ended the call and placed the phone back in the glove box.  
“He doesn’t like me much now right?” Felicity asked, her brow furrowed.  
“He’s not your biggest fan, but he’ll get over it,” Oliver chuckled, amused at imagining the look on his friend’s face once he discovered she was missing.  
“I’ll be sure to send him a fruit basket, that’ll make him come around,” she grinned, unfolding a pair of glasses from her pocket.

“You wear glasses?” Oliver questioned, clipping his seatbelt into the lock.  
“Sometimes, I took my contacts out last night,” she breathed, the words ‘ _last night_ ’ hanging open in the space between them.

Oliver rolled his tongue across his teeth, deciding whether or not to say anything about _last night_ as he pulled the car back onto the highway.

“I owe you an explanation,” Felicity said quietly, the top on the car was up, so the rushing of the wind didn’t require her to speak any louder.  
“You don’t owe me anything,” Oliver replied, although he wouldn’t mind an explanation.

“I was telling the truth when I said it wasn’t you Oliver.”  
He went to reply, but she silenced him before words left his mouth, “please, just let me say this, or I’m afraid I won’t be able to.”

He nodded, his eyes glancing over at her with a softened kindness before the returned to watching the painted lines on the highway ahead.  
“I struggle with certain levels of intimacy,” she spoke softly, her hands wringing through the hem of her sweater.  
“I had a boyfriend who didn’t treat me well,” she breathed through the half-truth, “he liked to be on top, so I guess I just freaked out, I felt like I was back there, with him.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough for now. She couldn’t bear to part with any more, her resolve had faltered since this morning. She wasn’t ready to open the door anymore – it had been sealed for too long.

Oliver digested the words she was saying, he heard the vagueness in her explanation but he also heard the words of truth.

He would not push it further.  
“So, why did you come back towards where you knew I would be driving?” he asked, knowing full well she had almost an hour on them, she could have disappeared in that time.

The truth was she didn’t have an answer to that question. She had left John just outside of Dallas and she could have gone any direction she wanted, but she instinctively chose the one back to Oliver. The kindly trucker lady who helped her take the tire off Diggle’s car in record time and offered her a lift had offered the sage advice that sometimes people make decisions that aren’t always the right ones. Sometimes people act out of fear or confusion and that if we really care about them, we give them another chance.

Felicity didn’t feel like her time with Oliver had run its course. She decided to do something she had never done before – she decided to give him another chance – she decided to give herself another one in the process.

“I actually just missed Rhonda,” Felicity smiled, her feet back up on the dashboard.  
“Rhonda?” Oliver asked, bemused.  
“That’s what I’ve named your car, I missed your car. It’s a very nice car,” she laughed, walking her fingers across the window frame.  
“You’re not calling my car Rhonda,” Oliver laughed, glad for the sound of her voice again.  
“Well, what would you call her?” Felicity leaned back in the chair, a feeling of ease returning to her.

_A second chance sounded a lot like a new beginning and who knows, maybe that was in the cards for her after all._

 


	7. Texas Trust

“Please, come on, look at this place,” Felicity paraded around behind Oliver as he strolled the aisle of the gas station.

It was almost 8pm and if Oliver was honest he was shattered. The state line was still 2 hours away, a town where they could hope to find some place to sleep was probably a further 2 hours away, that would put them there around midnight.

He had every intention of sleeping in the car for a couple of hours somewhere over the state line, but with Felicity back with him, that didn’t seem like a good idea. Truth was, he wanted to leave Texas behind sooner rather than later because of guilt he felt when she said those last words to him at the B&B

 _I thought you were different._  
The words had hung around him like a noose in the empty cottage after she left. He realised in that moment he had done what everyone else had – he’d walked away.

For Oliver this wasn’t the first time he’d heard an incarnation of those five words. She had said them close on 3 years ago as they led her away and he was left holding it all.

He had given up on her, he had seen no other way. He didn’t regret that choice now, years later, but it often made him wonder whether things would be as they were now if he hadn’t. What things would be like if he had kept trying to force the pieces to fit together, to keep his family together? But he had been young, forced into a situation that even ones with decades more experience couldn’t face with real certainty and absolution.

“Please Oliver, they have steak, I need real food,” Felicity had his hand now, her eyes dramatically drooped and her rogue tinted lips in a glossed pout.

Perhaps a steak and a comfortable bed would go far.  
If they rose early enough, they could pass through New Mexico in 6 hours.

Felicity was hovering, with the pamphlet she had discovered on a tourist attraction stand clutched in her hands and a whimsical wonderment on her face – despite whatever it was that she was afraid to return to, Oliver admired that she could find beauty and wonderment in something as simple as a motel that was made to look like the main street of an old western town.

“You’re going to hawk this until I say yes aren’t you?” Oliver jested, his heading looking over his broad shoulder to Felicity who was still hovering behind it.  
“I’m a hawker,” she shrugged.

* * *

  
The music in the restaurant was loud, but not intrusive as Felicity and Oliver sat opposite each other in the dusty-red vinyl booth with the somewhat macabre plastic cow print table covering.

“Do you think those are all real?” Felicity asked nodding towards the animal heads that lined the balcony of the mezzanine floor above.  
“Would you want to know the answer?” Oliver asked, settling into the surprisingly comfortable booth.

Felicity shrugged, the answer was probably a no, she probably didn’t want to know.  
She smiled looking around the room at people who were simply going about their day, eating dinner with family, sharing a private moment with a loved one or enjoying a juncture of peace from whatever the outside world was throwing at them.

There was a particular scene she couldn’t tear her eyes away from. Only a short walk away was an older man with dusting of grey and black hair and beautifully rich dark chocolate skin balancing a small girl, with flouncing black hair and smiling eyes as wide as saucers, atop his leather loafers, oblivious to the fact they were dancing out of time to the country classic playing on the jukebox in front of them.

His smile was beaming and her enjoyment was written across her face as he spun her like Cinderella and lifted her into an embrace.

Oliver could see it if he turned his shoulder, but he was more intrigued at the way Felicity was experiencing the moment despite not being party to it. He watched her as she lifted her camera, looked to the side of it, back into the viewfinder and then took a photo.

“What do you look for?” Oliver asked as he watched Felicity slide the beanie from her head, her locks tumbling forward around her shoulders, bouncing playfully with each movement her head made.  
“Anything, everything,” she shrugged with a softened smile, “people enjoying each moment they have is a rare and beautiful thing,” she added, her eyes watching him over the rim of her drink.  
“Do you?” he asked, his eyes blinking downward, his thumb trailing through the condensation trawling down the outside of his glass.  
“Do I what? Enjoy each moment?”  
Oliver blinked upwards, hers was only a rhetorical question.  
“You already know the answer you think I’m going to give Oliver, so I wonder, do I prove you right by saying it, or do I saying something different just to get your eyebrow to do that frowny thing it does?” she smiled, leaning over the table to allow her softer voice to carry over the music.

He looked back up at her, his mouth raised into a smile at one corner and his eyes blinking back his expression.

Her lips pursed before turning upwards into a grin as her tongue broke through. At the same time the camera beside her spat out the finished product.  
She took the photo gently from the camera and held it inches away from her poised lips. Shaping them into a soft ‘o’ she breathed finely on the photograph, her eyes never moving off Oliver’s.

She slid from the booth, the photo poised between her thumb and forefinger. As she moved towards the jukebox where the older man still danced with the child she placed her free hand on the table to steady herself and leaned in towards Oliver’s ear, her lips only an inch from his cheek.

“I live each moment Oliver, whether I enjoy it or not would depend on the moment, don’t you think?” she whispered, her lips almost touching against his skin and her breath sweet and warm against his senses.

She smiled as she walked away. Seconds later, he watched her spark up a conversation with the little girl.

Oliver watched as Felicity bent down and with a soft and engaging smile and presented the young girl with the photo she had taken minutes before. He watched as the young girl’s face lit up in a full, all in, smile as she took the photo from Felicity’s hands.

Still beaming, the young girl reached up to her grandfather – Oliver assumed – and proudly displayed it. He in turn smiled between words that Oliver couldn’t hear and followed it up by placing what looked to Oliver like a gentleman’s kiss on a lady’s hand. Felicity curtsied with an imaginary skirt in response before waving a genteel hand at the small girl and walking back towards the table.

There was something so refined in the way she carried herself when a situation called for it, but she was almost a walking contradiction of that refinement when she swore like a sailor and kissed like a goddess… _that kiss._

Oliver stopped himself before he could taste it once more atop his lips. He had tried to send the memory to the corner of his mind like a misbehaving child, but it had sprung back, every one of his senses that were involved were betraying him now – his eyes could see her parted lips, rain beaded across them, full and slick, his nose could smell the delicate scent that radiated from her neck when she lay underneath him, his ears could her the soft moan she tried to hold back but it escaped through parted lips and his fingers could still feel her silken skin that almost melted under his touch.

His hands fisted trying to dull the sensation the memory was bringing up to him. He wanted to relive it, to touch her again but he couldn’t – he shouldn’t

_But oh how he wanted to._

Oliver adjusted himself discretely in the booth, crossing one leg over the other, afraid he was no longer in control of what his body was doing as he watched her slide back into her chair just as the food arrived.

The waiter left with their thanks and their wide-eyed wonderment at the large portions on their plates.  
“How is it you make complete strangers feel like they know you?” he enquired, drawn to the way her hair reflected the light above her, casting an almost halo like haze around her.  
“I can be what people need me to be,” she shrugged, her eyes downward as she drifted her fork around her plate toying with her food.

“Is that what you’re doing with me? Being who you think I want you to be?” he asked pointedly before taking another bite of his meal. He had been right, a good steak was most definitely welcomed.  
“Is that what you think?” she replied, her eyes wide, intrigued.  
“No,” he answered simply, “I think some of what you show me is practiced, but I also think you’ve shown me parts of you that you don’t show other people,” he finished, his words soft and true.

It was something he had mused over in times when they didn’t talk, when he would steal a look at her and see something different, something that didn’t appear forced or rehearsed. It was those moments, those precious few moments that he truly believed he saw the real Felicity – and she was beautiful.

“Maybe it’s not that I hide those things from other people, maybe you’re just the only one that sees them,” she blinked up at him, her eyes glassy – perhaps a thin film of a tear captured in them – whatever it was they made for the clearest blue eyes he had ever seen.

There she was, the real Felicity. She was beautiful.

The moment hung between them, not as awkward silence but as quiet reflection, each one consumed with their own thoughts. Both unaware they wanted the exact same thing.

“So, tell me something about you that I don’t already know?” Felicity asked after long minutes had passed over them.  
“I have a sister,” Oliver replied honestly. He wanted honesty from her, it was only fitting he offered some in return.  
“That makes sense, I can see that,” she smiled, dropping another long curly fry into her mouth.  
“You can?” Oliver asked, looking over the rim of his glass.  
Felicity absently pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and nodded.  
“You have a big brother sense about you and you’ve never told me to hurry up in the bathroom. Your friend Dig, he doesn’t have a sister, my chat about the miracle of periods made him pull a face like he was watching a slasher film,” Felicity laughed, causing Oliver to respond in kind.  
“She’s younger than you, yes? And you take care of her?” she asked.  
Oliver nodded, swallowing his mouthful of food, “she just turned 14, she goes to a boarding school, so she lives there most of the time.”  
“That must be pricey. Is that why you take jobs finding and collecting spoilt rich kids from across the country?”  
“It’s worth it,” Oliver chuckled, the joke not lost on him, “she’s a great kid.”  
Felicity smiled, her heart sinking into itself at the reality that Oliver was what an older brother should be.

“Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” Oliver asked, noting the deep almost mournful look that had flickered across Felicity’s eyes.  
“You’re file is quite substantive, but does it tell you that I can balance a book on my head while I pirouette?” Felicity smiled, her hands subconsciously brushing back her hair, revealing the soft skin of her neck.  
“Bullshit,” Oliver cracked, his hand tapping successively across the table.  
“I most certainly can,” she pouted, playfully indignant at his disbelief.  
“That I have to see,” he smiled, leaning his body onto the table, his eyes catching a glimpse now of the part of her neck that she had revealed, her neck – the one he could still smell in his mind.

* * *

  
The food was all but gone, the plates collected and the soda glasses finally empty. They had spent nearing on 2 hours talking about idle things. Oliver spoke of his mother’s penchant for baking and how the smell of apple pie was one of his fondest memories of her. Felicity admitted she had once attempted to bake her father cookies when she was 10, only she had used actual paper instead of baking paper and set off the entire sprinkler system in the 3 storey, 12 bedroom estate.

They never asked hard questions, never delved deeper than happy moments and cherished memories, both happy to avoid the memories that brought sadness.

Felicity had contemplated asking Oliver again about the picture of the small child he carried around – but she decided against it.

Oliver had considered asking Felicity about her birth mother, the one he knew next to nothing about – but he left it alone.

It was the perfect distraction for both of them, for differing reasons.

The motel was a short walk across the parking lot and as Felicity stepped in to the reception area a step behind Oliver she was met with a smiling and familiar face.  
“You folks staying with us tonight?” the older gentleman with the charm of a bygone era asked.  
Felicity smiled brightly, “we are,” she replied.  
“Well let’s make sure you have the best room then.”

Minutes later, the paperwork was done and the kindly man handed over a room key, it wasn’t until after they’d left the reception that Oliver looked down at the tag _Honeymoon Suite_ it read in typical Texan font.

He showed Felicity who chuckled lightly  
“Well I suppose he has some opinion formed about us Mr Queen,” she winked, playfully taking his hand up the stairs.  
The room looked like something from a Texas style soap opera, the bed a story unto itself. A cowhide couch sat in front of it, balanced on long horns for feet, the arms and back also made entirely of long horns.

The deep red carpet was soft underfoot and in stark contrast to the white walls and wood framing that followed around the room. The bed itself was huge, so tall one side had a step to get up to it. A stately chair sat below an intricate design on the ceiling which framed a golden chandelier.

Felicity soaked it all in, the tiny little touches like the tapestry hung above the fireplace or the scalloped design carved into areas around the room. It wasn’t the fanciest of places but to Felicity it was like a welcoming hug after a long day.

Oliver was focused only on the bed and just how much he would like to sink into that, the day’s travel finally catching up with him.

Felicity heard Oliver close the door with a soft click behind her. He walked around her placing the bags on the couch that was made to look like it was fashioned entirely out of animal parts. For her own peace of mind Felicity had decided to assume it was fake.

He had his back to her, his hands rummaging through his bag, she didn’t know what for – didn’t really care. She watched his back muscles flex tight across his chest under the confines of his thin woollen sweater. She had not been able to shake that memory of his warm chest pushed up against her – perhaps she didn’t really want to.

She took a step forward and brushed a delicate hand down his spine. He turned, still slightly stooped from his rummaging. It was then she caught his lips in her own, her finger pushed gently into the side of his cheek, his soft trimmed beard prickling against it, his lips surprised but immediately welcoming – soft and pouted against hers.

She felt his hands delicately skate up her arms again and for a moment she was frightful that he would push her away like he had the first time. Unwilling to feel that rejection again she pulled back slightly as his cheeks hollowed in a breath.

“Felicity, I don’t want to see you hurt again,” Oliver sighed, almost mournfully as her lips lingered just above his.  
“Oliver,” she whispered, a soft exhale passing between them, “I want this.”

Her hand moved towards his, drawing it up into mid-air beside them, like the pose before a waltz, she stretched out his palm as her fingertips danced across his, tapping out a secret message between them as their palms hovered apart.

Her nose nuzzled softly against his, her crystal blue eyes floating upwards to catch his as they blinked down at her.  
“I want to know,” her voice was soft, her bottom lip catching on her teeth.

His hand skated across hers, entwining and parting like a tide on a beach.  
“Know what?” he asked, his mouth still dangerously close to hers, each breath she took warm against his skin.  
“Know what it’s like,” her lips brushed his, sharing the most delicate of kisses, “to know you, to know us.”

Her index finger trailed down the centre of his palm, and down his wrist, lightly grazing across the veins there.  
“I’ve never been so sure,” her hand moved the same path back up, her fingers folded into his.

She breathed warm against his cheek, her body on the highest tippy toe she could, so close to him she could feel his broad chest rising and falling against her.  
“So, I’m going to kiss you again, but if this isn’t something you want, tell me to stop and I will, and we’ll watch TV and discuss our favourite animals,” she smiled, each delicate movement caught against his poised and parted mouth.

She rolled her bottom lip under her teeth, her tongue lightly glossing between her lips before she closed the hair’s breath distance between them, her supple lips softly pillowing his bottom lip. For a moment the only movement came from her until his lips sparked to life, mimicking her in encasing her top lip, spilling himself over the soft dip of her upper lip.

Amidst the movement of their lips and breaths of warm air, Oliver spoke up “I want to know too”

Felicity hummed against him, her tongue spilling into his mouth, lapping gently against his own as her pouted lips caressed his bottom lip, hungrily devouring him. Her only thoughts so far were of him and she was determined to keep it that way.  
“Oliver,” she whispered between tender, rhythmic kisses.  
He hummed a response, but she didn’t need one, she just wanted to say his name, letting it seep over her lips and hold her in this moment, hold her in the present.

She pulled back, her lips breaking away from his. With an almost petulant sigh Oliver’s eyes opened but his lips stayed pouted, ready to resume.

Felicity took at full step back, eager to watch his eyes from that vantage point. She wanted to see them walk down her body, take in each curve. She wanted to see him watch her, like she knew he would – not to lord it over him in a power play, but because she wanted to feel wanted by him. She wanted to know that intimacy.

She toed off each shoe, kicking them, one after the other, back towards the corner of the room. With her lip snagged between her teeth, she watched him watching her under hooded eyes and raised brows. Toying along the hem of her knitted sweater she raised it an inch, then paused, slyly goading him to speak.

“Feli....city,” he almost hummed it into two syllables, rolling them together like a melting word he couldn’t contain in his mouth.

She wanted this, every drawn out second of it. She was afraid that if the moment sped up that she would loose herself in it, leaving herself vulnerable to the tricks her mind would play, but if she stayed present in each moment, her eyes firmly fixed on him, his name on rolling repeat across her lips, then she could hold the control she needed over herself to feel the intimacy she craved from him.

“Oliver, I need,” she paused, all the times she had let a man take things from her, let them grope and touch and fill her, she had never asked for anything – she rarely stayed present, rarely even noticed them, but with Oliver she wanted that, she needed that.  
“Tell me,” Oliver replied, his hand instinctively reaching for her, afraid regret would follow her words.

“I need you to talk to me, to let me talk to you. Is that alright?” she asked timidly.  
It was a side Oliver had not seen, but teamed with the refreshingly honest glint in her eyes, it was truly one of the most alluring facets of her.  
“Of course,” he smiled, his words charming and toned with kindness, “whatever makes it easier.”  
Had he been given more time he would have thought of a more poetic way of saying that, but his lacklustre choice of words did draw up an effervescent laugh from Felicity.

Her smile stayed as she swallowed her hesitation and pulled off the black sweater, letting it drop from between her fingers to the floor, where her foot lightly tapped it away. She reached behind her back, pinching the small zipper pull tab between her thumb and forefinger she eased the zip open, her other arm wrapped over her chest holding the fabric against her body until the zipper was fully released.

She let the fabric slip completely from her body, billowing down around her feet and revealing her naked chest, rising and falling gently, her breasts following the same delicate movement.  
“Tell me what you see, touch me,” she breathed through dry lips that she wet with her tongue when she was finished speaking.

Oliver took half a step towards her, she was close now, but still far enough away that he could appreciate her standing before him. His hand reached out for her, his middle finger the only one to make contact with her silken skin.

“I see eyes that house a million thoughts,” his finger gently drawing a path down her cheek, “I see lips that I’m dying to kiss again,” his finger now dragging across her bottom lips, pushing it gently causing it to buckle at the pressure.  
“May I?” he asked, his parted lips breathing warm against her.  
Felicity nodded slowly but without hesitation.

Oliver placed a finger under her chin, gently guiding it up to where his puckered lips met hers in a beautifully innocent kiss that was nothing more than lips pressed against lips, his nose gently against hers, a slow rise pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. They broke away with a soft pop of air and joint smiles.

Oliver folded his fingers around her glasses and eased them off her face, placing them on the table within arm’s reach to the side of him.

Brushing her hair over her shoulders he revealed her neck, the one he had every desire to kiss again, but instead his lips moved to the soft spot just below her earlobe, his dewy mouth warm against her.  
“I see you Felicity, every side of you, and you’re beautiful,” he whispered into her ear between lightly peppered kisses before sucking in against her earlobe, the sensation of it drawing out a satisfied gasp from Felicity’s lips.

His finger trailed across her collarbone leaving a sprinkling of goose bumps in its wake. It veered down towards her breast, stopping just above the rise of it and trailing down the side, following the round curve of her breast before slowly skating up the centre of her chest, stopping at the dip of her sternum.

His mouth released her ear as his other hand lay rested at the small of her back. He cocked his head to the side, stooping himself just a little lower in his knees, eager to see her eyes, to be sure she was still okay.

She smiled at him, her eyes still filled with the same endearment they had been moments before when she had asked him to touch her.  
“Felicity,” he spoke her name softly, the sound of it like welcomed summer breeze, “if this gets too much, if you want to stop, just ask. You can trust me,” he was staring right at her, he needed her to know and understand what he was saying. She could trust him.

“I can trust you,” the words were only meant to be to herself, kept inside, but as they passed over her lips she smiled at them.

He kissed her again, eager to taste her lips once more, but holding back from devouring them, choosing instead to let her set the intensity of the kiss. She pulled him close, forcing their lips deeper, she parted her lips, her tongue skating across his bottom lip between broken kisses and heavy breaths. He mirrored her movements, his own tongue forging through her lips, delicately skimming over the inside of her cheeks.

She reached for his sweater, now aware of the scratching fabric as it grazed across her hardening nipples. She pushed it up with her hands, her fingers skimming across the definition of his lower chest.  
“Oliver,” she panted, pulling back from the kiss, “I want you to take this off,” she smiled, tugging on the fabric in her hands.

He obliged, pulling both the sweater and the white cotton tee underneath clean off together and throwing it on top of her discarded clothing.

She looked at his body with hooded eyes, her tongue idly swooping across her lower lip before her teeth bit it inward. She was taking snapshots with her eyes, trying to remember everything so if her eyes closed and her mind started to betray her she could focus back on them. She could recount Oliver – the man she could trust.

The other one had taken so many firsts from her, but Oliver would be her new first and this time it would be willingly.

Her hands moved to the fly of her jeans, her eyes never leaving off from watching his. She saw them spark, saw his left eyebrow raise just a twitch and she released the button on the jeans. Slowly she peeled down the zipper, his eyes flicking between her eyes and the tracks of the zipper she was undoing.

She watched a smile form at the corner of his mouth as she paired back the corner of the jean fly, exposing just a hint of her white lace panties.  
“Oliver,” she spoke, her voice poised and soft.  
He took a step forward as though her willing servant.

“I want you to take these off,” she breathed into a kiss against his smooth chest, her tongue skidding over a dip between the muscles as she tugged on his own pants, “and then I want you to take mine off,” she smiled gingerly against his chest, the rapid increase of his heart bringing a second smile to the fore.

She had found her balance for now. She would control this at the same time as giving herself over to it freely in a beautiful balancing act.

Oliver did as she asked to his own pants without much ceremony, casting them to the side before kneeling down in front of her, his hands either side of her hips, his hand span enough to almost cover her completely.

His thumbs hooked over the waistband of the jeans and with a gentle tug he slipped them over her pert behind, his index fingers skimming across the fabric of her panties, the lace softer than he had imagined it would be.

He leaned in, placing a feathered kiss below her navel sending her stomach folding into itself from the tickled sensation.

His hands guided her jeans down the back of her legs, his palms flat against her skin, running over each curve with precision, savouring each second that it took before they reached the floor and Felicity stepped out of them.

“Can I kiss you here?” he smiled, looking up at her as his thumb slid atop the fabric of her underwear, gently pushing between her folds.  
She nodded her approval, mixed in with a slow hum drawn up from the pit of her stomach.

Oliver drew his hands back up her legs having them come to rest one underneath the curve of her backside and the other rode over the top stopping at the small of her back. He stabled her with his hands as he leaned in once more placing a breathy kiss against the white fabric between her legs.

Felicity arched her back against the mounting sensation of warmth between her legs, but his hands steadied her, holding her firmly but kindly against his mouth. She kept her eyes wavering across him, her mind awash with his name _this was Oliver, she could let herself go, she could trust Oliver._

His chin scooped in between her thighs, forcing them to part a little further as he placed deeper, more fervent kisses against her. He could feel her warming wetness brimming through the thin scrap of material that kept his lips from her. He was eager to taste her, to have parts of her greedily and fully but he held himself back, reminding himself that she would set the pace – she would ask and he would do.

“Is this okay?” he mouthed, trapping the words against her warm soft thighs as he kissed them with lingering swooshes of his tongue, his fingers moving behind the fabric of her panties and sliding between her folds.

Felicity’s knees buckled at the synchronous pleasure she was receiving. His mouth against her thigh littering kisses dispersed between the delicate lapping of his tongue. His fingers gently sliding through her heat and toying pleasurably with her bundle of nerves.

“Oliver,” she breathed, through pursed lips and heavy eyes.  
“Mmm?” he hummed against her thigh, his fingers still swirling around her, her slick heat coating them and her.  
“Bed,” she managed, afraid if she stood here much longer with him doing that, that her legs would turn to jelly and not even his hands could prop her up.

With a pop of his mouth against the curve of her thigh he pulled his head back and stood up, his hands still dancing a pattern between her folds. He watched her eyes, looking for any subtle changes, any flickers of what he had seen the other night, but they were still as clear as they had been when she had asked to know what it felt like.

Moving his hand from her heat, he stooped down, one arm under her arm and across her shoulders, the other at the back of her knees. He lifted her up in one sweep – she barely weighed a thing, he had expected as much, she wasn’t a waif, but she was no strain on his muscles either. He kissed her lips again as he held her in his arms. He had never experienced a moment of passion like this, so drawn out and so intimate.

The days they had spent together could be counted on fingers but as he was kissing her, cradled in his arms, it was like they had known each other for a lifetime in a million different universes.

He carried her to the oversized bed and gently placed her onto the billowing soft blue suede linen, dubious himself about hovering over her, acutely aware of what she had told him that morning. Sensing his trepidation, she shifted her body creating a space for him to lie down next to her, gesturing her invitation she rubbed her palm across the space, her other hand outstretched towards him.

Oliver took her hand and lay on the bed next to her, his hand gently stroking up and down across her smooth and naked shoulder. Felicity smiled thumbing her hand across his hairline, enjoying the way his brow moved as his eyes scanned her naked form beside him.

She ran her foot gently down his thigh, folding her legs through his, rolling her body closer to him, her heaving chest now warm against his strong and broad chest. She kissed his lips once, twice a third time, each peck she placed was like a surge down his back converging at the base of his hardening member.

The fourth time she kissed him, his lips snapped over hers, gently biting it between his teeth, pleading with her to stay, trapped against his dewy and needy lips. She obliged rocking her chest against his, her soft breast caving in against the pressure of his taunt muscles.

Barely above a whisper she said his name against his lips, reminding herself where she was and who she was with. He mimicked her action, breathing her name in response onto her pillowed bottom lip.

Felicity lay her opened palm on the round of his shoulder, her fingers barely reaching the back of his shoulder as she pushed against him, her lips still encased around and under his. He felt her push, she was stronger than he would have accounted for, he bowed to her wish, rolling from his side to his back, cupping her body in his arms and inevitably taking her with him.

She cracked a smile and a muted laugh against his lips causing the same reaction to come from him. She was half atop him now, her breasts either side of one of his strong arms, her hips angled to slide her heat over his brawny thigh.

Felicity moaned into his mouth as she grinded slowly and purposefully against him, the impact hitting her in spots that forced tiny gasps to escape from her mouth into his, the sensation of which made Oliver tense his thigh which extended the pleasure Felicity extracted from rubbing herself against him – an infinite circle of maintained pleasure.

She was wet, she knew and he could feel it. Her slick warmth against his leg, pushed through the delicate lace.

She ran a tender touch down his chest, her fingers weaving through and over each valley and mound before she shifted her leg to the other side of his hip, using its leverage to hoist her body atop his the corners of her mouth turning up into grin down at him.

Oliver sighed expressively as she sat her weight down on his upper thighs, his now throbbing and almost fully erect penis sandwiched between her thighs, the same ones he swore he could taste on his lips. His hands rested on her hips, his thumbs swiping upwards from her inner thigh to her naval, the pressure making her arch against him pushing her ass cheeks up his thigh and her clothed heat hard against his penis.

Felicity swiped her tongue across her lips, savouring each touch he laid on her as she gripped the waistband of his briefs, wrapping them tightly in her fingers and yanking them downward, jolting a surprised look from Oliver.

She paid him no mind as she folded them down his legs, lifting her weight off his upper thighs to allow the briefs to pass underneath. Once past his knees he took it upon himself to push them down further with his feet, shuffling out of them completely.

She walked her hands up his chest, lowering her own dewy soft body against his. Her mouth met him in a fevered kiss of swiping tongues and delicately gnashing teeth. He rose his chest upward enjoying the way her nipples felt against him.

Oliver folded his thumbs into the top of her panties, folding the material back on itself.  
“Is this okay?” he asked between the pulsating kisses.  
She didn’t answer, instead she lifted off him again, her hands atop his guiding them and the panties caught in between his fingers over the curve of her backside before she folded her legs out through them.

Both naked now, hot skin pressed together, she slid her body back down atop him, kissing against his neck as his hands skirted circles across her soft silken back.

Her lips forged against his eager to taste him. She lifted back upwards, pulling him up with her.  
“I want you to touch me, how you want to,” she whispered into his ear, a lip gliding up his jawline.  
He moaned breathlessly into the warm air surrounding them. Burying his face in her neck he nuzzled warm dewy kisses all over it, the sweetest veil of sweat glistening along her shoulders as she gave herself over to him completely.

Her head fell backwards, the tips on her golden hair feathering across his hand that steadied against her back. Every part of her skin he touched was like the finest silk between his fingers, every curve her body made like a beautiful pathway he was desperate to discover.

He took her rounded breast and cupped it, his thumb tacking lightly over her sensitive nipple. He watched her eyes blink at him, restlessly trying to stay open but lulling closed everything a spike of pleasure engulfed her.

Oliver pulled her closer lifting her wet heat against his lower chest. She mewed against the release from pressure his shaft was giving her but forgave it the instance his mouth closed in around her breast. He arched her backwards, stretching her waist and playing with the angle this position afforded him.

He swirled his tongue over her nipple, toying with it between gentle sways from his lips and peppered nips from his teeth. Sucking her in she felt her breast bending to his will, caving into his mouth. She felt her own gasps escaping and her body shifting upwards, writhing her tempered sex against his sculpted chest.

She wanted to loose herself in him and for the first time she decided that might just be okay.

His hand moved down her back, his fingers plying into the roundness of her ass as he switched breasts paying the same attention to this one as the one before it with a chorus of lips and tongue and teeth, pulling and sucking and nipping.

She was loosing herself.  
She gripped into hair, her fingers splayed out across his scalp.  
_This was Oliver. This was Oliver._ The words ran over and over through her head.

Her head lurched forward as her eyes jerked open to see him, his eyes mostly closed his mouth wrapped around her breast taking his time with it.

Oliver moaned as Felicity scooted her body back down, releasing his mouth from around her breast. Her heat was warm and fluid, she wanted him inside her like a hunger in the pit of her stomach yearning for satisfaction.

Her hands moved to his neck and her forehead pressed against his as she lowered her body down onto him, easing him inside her, shifting her weight to let his tip slide against her trembling walls. She felt herself surround him, stretching to accommodate his size. He growled his pleasure as his hands pressed against her waist moving with her in the slow precise rocking motion she was adopting.

Oliver couldn’t hold himself a moment longer and as he lowered back on the bed she slid him deeper, pulling him with her – inside her – as her hands anchored atop his shoulders. He was fully inside her now, touching every inch of her it felt like.

With heated pants and lidded eyes they slowly rocked in rhythm, she swayed her hips back and forth as he arched himself up and down.

His thumb slid between her folds eager to feel her heat, he found her clit and pushed lightly against it, the pressure enough on the sensitive nerves to make her howl ... actually and honestly cry out like animal.  
“Fuck,” she panted, quickening her sway against him in repayment.  
“Do that again,” she pleaded.  
He obliged, gingerly enjoying the pleasure such a simple act was giving her.  
“Fucking fuck,” she brimmed, pushing her rhythm faster back and forth.

The flicking and heat plunging Oliver now into a state of euphoric expressions of delight. He growled as his tip pushed firmly against her walls, her hips gliding against his base, the whole shaft trickled with pleasure.

He jerked upward sending him even deeper and forcing another howl to break from her mouth. He watched hungrily as her breasts bounced slightly in time with his up and down. She bounced harder against his base, her swaying now more akin to a boat atop a rough ocean.

Oliver found himself gasping, holding on the cusp of release.  
“Come for me Felicity, enjoy it,” he smirked, pushing his thumb deeper into her clit.  
“Fuck.”  
She didn’t even care how loud she was now.

She clamped her thighs tight into his, her release so close she felt it starting in her core and radiating down her legs. So close he could feel her tightening around him. He held on, almost unbearably.

Again his thumb pushed in, this time with an added index finger rolling over the top. Combined with the other sensations coursing through her she fell over the edge with a breathless, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Her juices spilling slick warm heat fluidly over him was enough to send him toppling over the edge right after her. She was still atop him, breathing heavily, riding her quiet wave. He used his arms against her hips to sway her gently back and forth, prolonging both their orgasms.

Minutes passed and he grew soft and spent inside her as her internal spasms slowly softened.  
“Oliver,” she moaned his name through closed lips as she walked delicate kisses up his abdomen, finally meeting with his lips which she peppered with thankful kisses.

_This was Oliver, she could trust Oliver._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry (?) that was a monster to read.... I have no concept of word minimums or maximums.....


	8. New Mexico

Oliver’s fingers lingered at the small of her back, the sheet barely covering across her hips, the bedside lights casting a soft yellow hue across their skin. Slowly he drew them up her spine, barely touching skin to skin as she lay on her stomach alluringly close to him, her naked chest lightly pressed against his arm as her arms were folded around the pillow she held close under her neck.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his lips parched from the last moments he had spent putting them against any part of her body he could reach.

She smiled against his warm shoulder, breathing in against the salty sweet scent of his skin she had found herself craving.  
“Perfect,” she sighed, exhaling through softly pouted lips.  
“Just like the last three times you asked m,e” she continued, gingerly licking her tongue over the round on his shoulder as her body instinctively drew closer, rocking her hips against his waist.

He skated his fingers up and down the curve of her back, barely touching with more than the very tips of his fingers. He caught the sheet laid over her between two fingers, tenting it to allow his hand to pass underneath and touch against the silken smooth rise of her ass.

It was late and sun would rise in a few hours but he didn’t want to close his eyes before she did in case he missed anything about her.

“Felicity?” he spoke her name like an exhale into her hair which folded under his neck.  
“Mmm,” she barely replied, her hands trickling around his pec as it rose and fell with each breath he steadily took  
“You know I have to take you back,” he spoke quietly, the truth in his words having not been spoken between them before now.  
“If I don’t, someone else will and I’ll lose more than my job,” he continued, fully aware of the far reaching implications being in contempt of a court order could have.  
“I know,” she tried to smile, but there was little to smile about.

He combed through her hair as she innocently blinked up as him, the flushed peach tone of a woman who had felt the pleasure she had was still present on her face.  
“But I’ll go with you, I won’t take you back to your father’s house, just to the Courthouse. You don’t have to see them,” he spoke calmly, the cogs turning in his brain.

A genuine smile formed at the corners of her naturally rose-tinted lips as she watched his eyes turn imaginary pages in his brain.  
“We’ll see the Judge, you can show him you may be a right royal pain in the arse, but you’re perfectly sane, give or take,” he laughed, cupping her body tightly against his, pushing her breasts against his arm, drawing out a soft hum of appreciation.

“I don’t think you should open with the right royal pain in the arse line,” she laughed, poking her finger into the hollow of his cheek.  
“I’m serious Felicity, that order is bullshit, any Judge will see that and throw it out. You can emancipate yourself, have what you always wanted,” his hand smoothed down the cascade of her hair.  
“And what have I always wanted?” she asked, her foot running down the inside of his thigh causing an involuntary quivering up his spine.  
“The freedom to choose,” he replied in a hushed tone before pressing a lingering kiss against her forehead, “that’s what you told me, I assume it’s still the case.”

She smiled again, nuzzling her head into the warmth of his chest. Those had been the same words she had spoken when, on the first night of this journey, he had asked her what is was that she wanted. It had been the truth then and it was the truth now.

“It’ll be okay Felicity, it won’t be worth the paper it’s written on, whatever you want to leave behind, you will,”  
He believed what he was saying, that despite the flashes of broken he had seen, Felicity didn’t deserve to have her choices taken away from her.

For a moment Felicity let herself imagine that possibility, but Oliver was naïve to what money could buy you in Starling...what money could silence.

“It’ll be okay,” Oliver repeated, as he breathed in the feeling of her body pressed against his.  
“Yeah,” she exhaled the word into his dewy skin, placing a kiss atop the same spot before the sudden urge to close her eyes became too much to fight back.

Felicity fell asleep first, locked in Oliver’s warm embrace with the sound of his rhythmic heartbeat a continued lullaby and his warm breath atop her head like a blanket of safety around her.

Oliver, stretched his neck, careful not to jolt her awake with any rushed movements. From the best angle he could get he watched her sleep for a time. When he turned off the lights he gazed transfixed at the way the high moonlight danced across her skin.

 _Easily, she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen._  
It was unlike him in every respect, but strangely it felt right. Like a half finally finding the piece it didn’t know it needed to make it whole.

He let his eyes rest as his fingers still smoothed their course up and down her spine till they too slowed and halted somewhere around her tailbone, rested half exposed to the night air and half behind a veil of white cotton sheet.

* * *

  
Felicity awoke to a sensation warm against her back, instinctively she rolled her hips like a wave into the mattress underneath before she had even registered what the sensation was. Her legs stretched out and her toes clenched into a curl as the warmth navigated up between her shoulder blades.

It wasn’t until she heard a low hummed moan and felt a swished tongue pass over the base of her neck did she realise it was Oliver placing heated kisses in a hopscotch line up her back.

“Morning,” she sighed into the pillow, now acutely aware his hands were touching her too, one feathering a touch down the inside of her leg, the other holding firm under her hip bone.  
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he hummed, shifting his weight beside her, “but we need to leave soon.”

She sighed out a soft yawn, looking past him to the alarm clock on the bedside table, it was read 9:44am.

She slid out from underneath him causing him to groan his dramatized disappointment. Sitting up she pulled her knees into her chest and held the sheet across her tented body, the remainder of it falling freely away from her body at the sides, exposing the beautifully rounded profile of her breasts and the silken smooth canvas of her back.

He lay on his side next to her, a scrap of sheet corner barley covering the dip of his public down and all that lay south of it. With one arm wrapped over her chest holding the sheet across her breasts, she used the free hand to lay a flat palm against his concaved navel.

“So, last night,” she smiled, smoothing her hand over his abdomen.  
“Are you still okay with what happened?” he asked, placing a delicate kiss over her hip bone.  
“Why don’t you join me in the shower and find out,” she smiled, sliding off the bed taking the sheet with her and exposing Oliver completely.

She winked as she padded around to the bathroom door. He watched motionless, the brisk mid morning air lapping up against his almost fully erect penis.

He smiled at her folding one exposed leg over the doorframe and went to make his move from the bed when his phone sparked to life.

He looked down at the display, it was a call he needed to take.  
“You go, I’ll join you in a minute,” he said nodding towards the phone.

She moved further into the bathroom out of sight, before an arm slinked out and threw the crumpled sheet to the floor by his feet.

“Hey Dig,” Oliver laughed, simultaneously picking up the sheet and answering the phone.

* * *

  
Fifteen minutes later Felicity strolled back into the room, one towel wrapped around her chest and another smoothing through her tousled hair. Oliver was still on the phone, the sheet that had once been around her now tied around his waist as he sat on the edge of the armchair scribbling across a torn piece of paper.

He smiled, acknowledging her presence.  
“And the info is good?” he asked through the phone, underlining two words on the paper that Felicity couldn’t read from her position.

He nodded, “Okay, good, tell Roy he did good, thanks man”.  
A pause as the other person spoke.  
“Tell her I’ll call her tonight, alright man, thanks.”  
Oliver chuckled as he looked up at Felicity.  
“She’s right here, you want to tell her yourself?” he laughed, said a goodbye and ended the call.  
“Dig says he’s still contemplating filing a grievance with his boss over the emotional distress you caused him,” Oliver smiled, taking Felicity’s hand as he stood up, “given I’m his boss, there may be a conflict of interests here.”

She rolled her lips around, blinking up at Oliver.  
“Who, me?” she smirked, bumping her hip against his.

“I’m sorry I missed the shower,” he kissed her neck breathing in her dewy fresh skin.  
“Next time,” she hummed, her fingers tugging playfully on the knot that was holding the sheet together.

“As much as I want to stay and explore that,” he sighed with a grin, taking her hands back into his, “we really need to go. I’ll be five minutes,” his hands slipped from hers as he gathered the note and slipped it into his jacket pocket hung over the back of the armchair.

“What’s that?” Felicity asked casually.  
“Where I hoping to find someone,” he replied, humming another growled kiss on her neck before disappearing into the bathroom.

* * *

  
Oliver emerged closer to ten minutes later, clean and fully dressed his hands running a towel across his head.

“All packed, but I demand breakfast first,” Felicity smiled, tying up the laces on her brown suede boots.  
She looked effortlessly stunning in the plain white stretch tee with long sleeves and a scoop neck that just barely skated the top of her breast bone.

She patted down her black jeans as she stood. If she was wearing makeup Oliver couldn’t tell, but her skin was luminous, her eyes a clear crystal blue and her blonde locks dusted with darkened strands still wet from her shower tousled loosely in thick sections of waves.

“Ready?” she smiled, brushing a finger under his chin, mocking his almost gaping mouth.

* * *

The cafe was quiet and small, the coffee warm and the food fresh. Felicity was sitting back in the grey fabric couch playing with her camera a plaid woollen blanket, that she had taken from the boot of Oliver’s car, wrapped over her shoulders and around her arms.

She placed the camera on the low table in front where Oliver promptly picked it up it. He smiled pointing it at her, before mimicking her actions from the night before, look in the viewfinder, back at her and then back in the viewfinder.

“What are you doing?” she laughed, shyly toying with a corner on the blanket between her fingers near her mouth.  
“Finding beauty,” he replied simply as he took a photo, capturing the simplicity of the moment.

* * *

  
It was another four hours before they stopped again midway through the state of New Mexico at a gas station amidst a variety of other shops.

Oliver was filling up the car as Felicity was browsing the aisles inside, idly flickering through a magazine as a guy not much older Oliver smiled next to her, reaching past her to pick up a magazine.

Oliver watched from beside the car, the dollar amount on the pump ticking over. He watched as the guy approached and leaned in towards Felicity. He watched as Felicity said something, brushing her hair back over her ear. The guy nodded and appeared to laugh as he turned his body a little more toward her.

****

“Yeah, my daughter is a big fan of these things,” he laughed, touching the cover of the Batgirl comic in his hands.  
“Your daughter has good taste," Felicity smiled, oblivious to Oliver watchful gaze.

****

Oliver watched as Felicity nodded, he imagined her blues eyes blinking up at the guy as he stared down at her parted lips, just the perfect shade of pink.

The pump dinged at the full tank and clicked itself off. Oliver paid at the pump without registering the amount, got in the car and slammed the door shut, his mind a rush of thoughts he was struggling to be realistic about.

He reversed the car in manner that was probably a little too reckless given the surroundings. He jerked the car to a stop across two parks and stepped from the car.

He could still see the window Felicity was standing in front of, her hands now expressively gesturing near the man, Oliver wasn’t sure but it appeared to him that her hand was on his shoulder.

“It’s a great motel, your family will love it,” Felicity smiled at the near stranger.  
“Thanks for the travel tips, my wife will appreciate it.”  
“No problem, safe travels,” Felicity started to say more when Oliver’s hand gripped around her wrist, instantly she turned her head around, her eyes zoning in on his, a distinctive mix of surprise and confusion running through them, her brows pulled in towards her crinkled nose.

She placed the magazine back in the rack with one hand before she followed him footstep for footstep out of the store and towards an almost empty part of the parking lot. She yanked her hand downwards, releasing the grip Oliver had loosened around her wrist.  
“What the hell was that Oliver?” she asked, her voice slightly raised, her fingertips rolling over her wrist, where his hand had been.  
“I’m the one that should be asking that question,” Oliver gruffed, slapping his hand against a post box in frustration.  
Felicity shifted her weight from one foot to the other, crossing her arms across her chest.

“If you have something you want to say to me Oliver, I suggest you just say it instead of being a passive aggressive ass hat,” she spoke through an exhale her head shaking softly her hair tumbling over her shoulders

Oliver paced in a circle, his feet scuffing through some loose stones in the parking lot.  
“I don’t know what it is we’ve started here Felicity but the least you could do is not flirt around in front of me,” he barked, a hand flexing by his side.

Felicity leaned back on her heels, her mouth gaping over the words she wanted to say. She sighed out an exasperated breath.  
“You think that’s what that was? God, Oliver,” she turned away, her lips pursing in irritation.  
“What am I supposed to think it was?” he huffed.  
“No, don’t you put this on me Oliver. This is not my fault,” she snapped, her hands wringing over each other.  
“I’ve seen how you flirt, first hand remember,” he snarled, he heard the words as they left his mouth and instantly he regretted them.

Felicity bit in against her bottom lip, her head nodding sadly as each word echoed through her ears and her eyes blinking back the tears.  
“I get it, so that’s what you think of me? You know what, I’m going to go sit in the car and when you’re done being a complete fucking asshole you can come and find me.”  
She turned away.  
“Felicity...,” Oliver sighed, but she was already gone.

Oliver punched a closed fist on the top of the post box, the frustration was focused solely at himself.

* * *

  
Oliver reached for the handle of the car. He lifted it but the door never budged.

“It’s locked,” Felicity spoke, her feet tucked up into her chest on the front passenger seat, her fingers picking at her nail polish, the blanket from earlier in the morning wrapped back around her shoulders.  
“Can you open it please?” he sighed through the window that was cracked an inch open.  
“Say you’re done being a complete fucking asshole,” she replied, keeping her attention down at her dark polish.  
“I’m done,” he replied softly.  
“No,” she said looking up at him, “say those words, I am done being a complete fucking asshole.”

Oliver chuckled, shaking his head, humoured by her request.  
“Felicity,” he pursed his lips against the cracked window ,“I’m done being a complete fucking asshole.”  
She toyed with the fringe of the blanket.  
“Sorry I can’t hear you,” she replied, biting the inside of her cheeks to stunt the smile beginning to form  
Oliver stepped back and raised his outstretched arms above his head.  
“Felicity Smoak, I swear I am done being a complete fucking asshole,” he laughed, almost shouting each word.

She nodded her acceptance and leaned over the seat to the door, unlocking it before slinking back into her chair, jostling the blanket back onto her shoulders.  
Oliver opened the door and slid down into the seat. His hands wrung against the steering wheel as he sighed an exhale.  
“Felicity, I’m sorry, I was way out of line.”

She combed through her hair, ruffling it against her scalp.  
“Oliver, we had sex,” she spoke, turning her body towards him, her eyes focusing up at his, “really, really good sex,” she leaned across the centre console, cocking her head to the side, “really amazing sex Oliver.”  
He couldn’t hold back the smile that flashed across his lips.  
“And, the chances are pretty high that we will continue to have more really amazing sex,” she leaned across him, her hand folding into one of his ones flexing down by his side, “but men look at me Oliver, I wish sometimes they didn’t, but they do,” her eyes blinked away a renegade tear.

She sighed through parted lips, crawling onto his lap, her knees bent either side of him, her body resting on his thighs.  
“Right now I don’t know how to be any different to what I am,” she sighed, her hands sliding over each of his arms as she gently eased them around her waist, “but I like this, I want this, I don’t want anything else.”

She placed a hand on his chest, smoothing her fingers across it.  
“You asked me to trust you last night, now I’m asking the same in return.”  
“You’re right,” he breathed through an enamoured smile, his thumbs grazing her waist where she had placed them, “I’m sorry, you did nothing wrong.”

Felicity leaned in her forehead balancing against his.  
“She broke your heart didn’t she?” she asked, pulling her head back in time to see his eyes coloured with surprise.  
“The girl that cheated on you, she broke your heart, yes?” her hands on either side of his face.  
“How? Yes” he nodded “but how did you know?”  
She became more surprising to him each minute.  
“I just do,” she shrugged, smiling her lips softly over each other.

“I guess it’s a little good for me though,” she grinned, pushing her hair back over her shoulders as she leaned a little closer to his face.  
“And why is that?” he asked coyly, his fingers skimming underneath her cotton tee.  
She placed a soft kiss against his lips, biting gently the very tip of his cupid’s bow.

She sighed against his mouth, her bottom lip lightly dragging across his as she spoke, “I like you a little scarred, it means you’re human,” she kissed against his lips once more, Oliver matching it’s depth and sighing when she broke away early.

“To love even when it hurts us is a type of love you need to feel to appreciate the kind of love that doesn’t hurt,” she spoke softly, each word mirrored in her eyes focused on his.  
“How did you get so smart?” he kissed into her neck, his hands squeezing her tight.  
She shrugged with a grin, “I probably read it on a bumper sticker,” she laughed, toiling her hands through his hair.

She kissed his lips fiercely with a quick pop of her lips.  
“Sooooo,” she drew out the word, leaning her back against the steering wheel.  
“How about we have some of that amazing sex right now?” she smiled, skating her teeth across her lower lip, pulling it in at the corner.

Oliver almost purred at the suggestion.  
“Felicity, it’s the middle of the afternoon, we’re in a car in the middle of a Chuck E Cheese parking lot,” he laughed, always the realist.  
“What’s your point?” she pouted, playfully licking his face.  
“Okay, so what would you do if I said yes?” he chuckled, pinching in on her sides causing her to giggle innocently.  
“Well, I’d start by,” she paused lifting the hem of her cotton tee, exposing her navel and a smooth strip of her shapely waist.  
Oliver lightly tugged her hands back down, his lower body instinctively pushing up against her as he leant in and passionately kissed her, scouting his tongue through her lips into her welcoming mouth for just a few moments before her broke apart from her.

“If you take that off, there will be a riot of men surrounding this car and then I’ll have to fight them all, don’t make me do that,” he laughed, squeezing in against her again, his nose breathing in a smile.  
“Fair call,” she laughed, before peppering his face with tiny, playful kisses.


	9. Arizona

  
Oliver could feel his eyes dipping with each mile they took, the chilly night breeze through the open window and the fifth truck stop coffee he was drinking were doing little to stem the feeling washing over him.

It had been near on 7pm when they crossed the state line into Arizona and it was now nearing on 10pm.

Felicity was asleep with her head against the door, a bundled jacket for a pillow. Her hands were tucked up under her head, blissfully folded on top of each other, her elbows tucked in tightly against her chest. Her legs curved around and over the centre console with her feet splayed out on his lap. The passing lights on the highway lit up her face, dancing a light show of yellow and white hues across it.

A part of him wanted to wake her up, just to hear her talking. Her quick jibes, her peppered sarcasm, the heightened way she swore and the old soul wisdom that was so far removed from the other aspects of her.

It wasn’t that he felt these were fake or out of character, in fact, if anything Oliver felt those were insights, tiny glimpses of the deftly intelligence she seemed to keep hidden for the most part.

He thought about the first moments he had laid eyes on her, stepping through that red velvet curtain, she had looked nervous, timid even. Oliver had assumed back then that it was because the path of using her body to get money or attention was a new one, but looking back now he didn’t see nerves, he saw fear. That was what she swallowed down then, that was what she controlled now.

Oliver felt there was more to her story then what she let on. Someone had meticulously removed so much from the documents he was sent. It wasn’t abnormal, but the amount was excessive.

Felicity’s feet stirred in his lap, giving him an unexpected jolt of pleasure as they dug in a little too close to his junk. He looked over at her, her eyes softly blinking open.

After an extended yawn and a cat-like stretch Felicity sat up a little, balanced on her elbows.  
“You look tired,” she smiled, between a secondary yawn.  
“I’m fine, we’re still a while from a place that would have somewhere to sleep,” Olivier replied, blinking a little too long and adjusting his weight in his seat. Truth was, he was nearing exhaustion.

“Pull over and sleep in the car for a few hours,” she spoke, as she sat up a little more, her feet sliding from his lap.  
He smirked at the suggestion and idly rolled his neck until it clicked.  
“I don’t think you’re up to sleeping in a car,” he meant well, but he sounded a bit like an ass.  
“I’ve slept on a park bench before Oliver, I’m sure I can handle it,” she sighed, watching his eyebrow spark to life when she spoke.  
“You still think of me as that spoilt little rich girl, don’t you? I haven’t been her since I left home over a year ago.”

Oliver was surprised, his folder never said how long it was since she had left Starling, he had simply assumed it had only been a few months, the time it had taken him to find her in Florida.

“You didn’t know that did you?” she asked, adjusting her body in the seat, her feet tucked up under her body now, the seatbelt taunt across her.  
“I had assumed your departure from lifestyles of the rich and famous had been more recent,” he cocked his head slightly towards her, an almost apologetic smile on his face.

She sighed softly to herself. This was a trip down memory lane she didn’t want to take right now.  
“Anyway, as I was saying, you should pull over somewhere,” she walked her fingers up his arm, just hard enough to be felt through his leather jacket.  
“I’m fine,” he smiled, glad to be enjoying her company again if he was honest.

She leaned in and placed a delicate warm kiss on the underside of his jaw through the soft bristles of his close-cut beard. He hummed into it, the sensation lulling his eyes to blink a little longer than they should have. He pulled himself back into focus, trying to ignore the soft flickers of her tongue meshing against his skin.

“Felicity, I’m trying to drive,” he laughed her off, shrugging his shoulder to break the contact.  
She didn’t move, her hot lips still pushed up against his neck, every delicate kiss she laid on him trapping the cold breeze from his window against it sending a ricochet of tingling down his body.

“So drive then,” she smiled against his neck, her hand trailing up under the hem of his casual button down shirt.  
“You know I can’t focus when you’re doing that,” he breathed, his words heavy and drawn, despite his best efforts to ignore it, he could feel himself stiffening at her touch.

She sucked in against his earlobe, her nose sliding up tight against his hair line.  
“So,” she breathed into his ear, the warmth of her breath tingling against every nerve ending he had in the vicinity, “pull the fuck over and lets fuck,” she spoke with a decidedly playful grin pressed against him.

He hesitated, slowing his foot off the accelerator, but carrying on along the road regardless.

Her hand that had been softly smoothing across his chest, took a turn south and dipped under the waistband on his pants, cupping around his throbbing member.  
“I shouldn’t have to ask twice Oliver,” she smiled placing her eyes where he could see them in his peripheral.

Oliver was done resisting, pulling the car over into a gravelled and unmarked rest stop that took them far enough away from the highway.

He pulled the car up next to a littering of shrubs and bushelled trees. He tugged up on the handbrake and shut off the engine, leaving the headlights piecing through the darkness in front of them. He was about to say something when Felicity’s lips came crashing onto his and instantly he forgot all words.

She fought against the seatbelt as it held her back from him, but it wasn’t budging. She growled her frustration into his mouth before she pushed her index finger lightly into his cheek and then pulled her lips from his.

Sitting back in the seat she finally found the release button on the belt and after some muttered curse words it gave way and let her out of its confines.

Felicity blinked across the car at Oliver, dipping her bottom lip under her teeth. It was dark but the distant passing and fixed lights were enough to illuminate the expressions on their faces.  
“You pulled the fuck over,” she winked, crawling onto his lap and sliding a leg either side of his body as she had done earlier in the day.  
“Well you did ask really nicely,” he smiled, stroking back her hair in a tender display of something that was more than simple virility.

She leaned into his hand, blinking her eyes closed for a few moments longer, the warmth of his hand like a gentle pillow to her cheek.

When her eyes opened again they were staring directly down into his, her body propped up slightly higher than his slunk down in the driver’s seat.

Oliver’s other hand drove up her neck and stopped at her cheek, his fingers entwining into the loose bits of hair that fell forward. He took a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled the same way, the sound of it echoing through the car as he kept his eyes focused only on hers.

“You don’t have to do any of this for me Felicity,” he smiled, reading something unspoken in her eyes, “I’m not going anywhere. I told you I would stay by you, you don’t have to offer me _this,_ ” his eyes drew a quick path up and down her body, before latching back onto her eyes, “to make me stay.”

Felicity searched his eyes, looking for any trace of deceit or any formed manipulation – she found nothing, and she had become quite an expert at detecting it. No, Oliver spoke with a truth that Felicity was rarely afforded. She could tell he meant every word he spoke, and in her heart she knew that would make her decision to leave him in Vegas even harder.

She swallowed down the decision, saving the tears for it for another time, another day. For now she wanted to focus on this new experience where someone might actually mean what they say.

“I know,” she finally replied, her blushed lips curving up into a genuine smile.  
“But,” she continued, leaning in to kiss his forehead as her fingertips brushed over the first few buttons on his shirt, just under the collar.  
“I really want to,” she sighed, dotting a line of kisses from his forehead to the corner of his mouth, where his lips caught hers, his head turning into it slightly and deepening the pressure of the kiss.

Felicity danced her fingers down his shirt, gliding each button out of the loop seamlessly and without moving her lips away from his. When Felicity reached the last button and the shirt fell open to his sides she broke from the kiss to take a moment to cast her eyes over his chest – truly appreciating the way the distant lights and the smear of moonlight reflected across it.

“You are very handsome Mr Queen,” she winked, slowly drawing her fingers, one by one, over his, slightly scrunched, but still very defined, ab muscles.  
His body twitched involuntarily with each tickled step her fingers made across his chest before he shifted his weight in the seat, sitting his back straighter against it and slipping her a little further down his legs.

Their faces now closer in height he gently cupped her face into his hands and pulled her into a long and lingering kiss. A kiss that rode waves of depth and light grazing. A kiss that smoothed into her top lip as she hungered for his bottom lip. A kiss that was in sync and conveyed everything that needed to be said.

 _I want to_  
_You can trust me_  
_I want to_  
_I won’t leave you_

The kiss tore her breath away as Felicity rode up on her knees, gaining the leverage over Oliver to kiss deeper. She wanted what he offered her, even if it would only be for another day or two.

She anchored her palms firm against his shoulders, pushing him into the bucket of the black leather seat, her back arched against the chrome and lacquered wood steering wheel as her leg twisted around the excessively long gear stick.

Oliver’s palms moved up the inside of her white tee, touching skin against skin, his thumbs stopping momentarily to hold against her hip bone as she thrust her pelvis forward, the friction of her pants delectably rough against his exposed chest.

Her head bumped on the roof as she thrust a second time against his chest, forcing a pleasured moan to leave his mouth and drip into hers.  
“Are you okay?” he moaned through the kiss.  
Her teeth skated across his bottom lip, gently sucking in against it and placing a tiny nip onto it.  
“Your car is too small,” she smiled against his mouth as her leg tried to untwist from the gear stick.  
“It was made in 1967, this sort of thing was probably frowned upon,” he laughed, catching her lip between his own teeth in recompense

“I have an idea,” she winked, leaning past him into the backseat where she rummaged blindly through her bag on the floor until she found what she was looking for.

Felicity pulled the skirt up to her eye line, it would do. She winked as she opened the door and slipped over Oliver and out into the cold night air. She wiggled the skirt over her jeans then hopping on her bare feet she stripped off her pants and threw them into the backseat.

“Come,” she smiled, her weight shifting on the gravel, the stones pushing against her soles, as her arm outstretched

As he looked up at her from the car seat, he had a sudden realisation that it was a distinct possibility that – for some inexplicable reason – he would follow her almost anywhere. There was something particularly encapsulating about Felicity Smoak.

He took her hand into his and lifted himself from the car, her hand used only for a show of solidarity. Felicity’s lips were grinning a pop of a tongue splicing between her poised lips as she slid her hand around his waist, just around the curve of his back as she pushed the door closed behind him.

The hum of the cars and trucks on the highway in the near distance echoed through the bush behind them and the heavier tucks reverberated the stones underfoot as Felicity hooked her fingers into his waistband and walked him around the front of the car.

With her back towards the bonnet she slid her hands around his neck, her bohemian style skirt flaring out in the night breeze, wrapping itself over Oliver’s leg as she pulled his head down towards her and placed a soft kiss against his lips.

While her lips glided across his, tasting his warm breath mixed with the brisk air surrounding them, she positioned one heel on the polished chrome bumper and placed a flat palm on the bonnet.

Using the two points for control she lifted herself up onto the bonnet, gliding easily up the smooth painted finish. She pulled him in close, his hips now aligned with hers.

Pulling away from the kiss she blinked her eyes up at him before turning them down to the fly on his pants. Slowly she peeled back the button and then drew down the zipper.

He caught her hands in his before the zipper reached the end.  
“Felicity, the highway is right there,” he smiled nodding towards the late night driver, less than 300 steps away.  
“Do you get stage fright?” she mocked, leaving her hands in his grasp but licking a quick trail up his chest  
He couldn’t help but laugh, she brought out a softer side of him that anyone who knew him would be surprised by. He was certain he had smiled more with her over the last 6 days then he had over the last 3 years.

His hands released hers and slid to either side of her waist, sliding up just the sides of her tee and bunching it up her arms as his fingers skimmed the lace trim of her bra.

His lips moved back to hers, drinking in the soft sensation of her tongue gently scouting under the ridge of his bottom lip. The traffic noise melted into nothing, a veil of soft pleasured groans instead the only thing either one could hear. He laid her gently backwards, her feet lifting off the bumper and wrapping in around him.

His knees bent against the front of the car, his legs casting a shadow in the ray of the headlights, as her body lay almost flat atop the smooth bonnet, the weight of his body stopping her from sliding down it. He reached a hand up her silken thigh, humming his approval as he discovered she had long since ditched her underwear.

She stretched out her arms, barely long enough now to finish pulling down his zipper. She scooted down the bonnet, her pelvis now firm against his. Folding her hands under his briefs she smiled into his kiss as she grazed along the top of his already erect penis.  
“Well he doesn’t take much coaxing,” she laughed against his lips, flicking her fingers over his length  
He crooned into his exhale, pushing his warmed misted breath against her cheek as his lips drew downward from her lips, kissing a passage down to her neck.

The sudden and jarring sound of a truck horn sent Oliver stumbling backwards as three more of the same sounds echoed through the almost still night.  
“I guess they can see us,” Felicity laughed, flopping down flat onto the bonnet, her legs still entwined around Oliver’s waist.

If it was daylight, the bright red of Oliver’s cheeks would have shone like a beacon. Thankfully, it wasn’t and he could hide his embarrassment behind a veiled night.

Felicity lifted herself back up, her arms slipping around his waist where her legs were holding him tight.  
“Go get the blanket, turn off the lights and meet me there,” she smiled, her lips skidding across his with each word she spoke as she nodded towards the bushy area parallel to the car.

Perhaps if he didn’t have such a throbbing urge between his legs he may have suggested they just get back in the car and drive on, but he did – so he didn’t suggest anything of the sort, in fact he dutifully did just as she asked.

* * *

  
Dry branches broke under the weight of his boot as he walked slowly down to where he had watched Felicity vanish. He saw her creamy white hand reflecting the moonlight as it gesture to him from behind a blanket of trees a little deeper into the bush.

He slid in next to her, the blanket she had been wearing around her shoulders most of the day, tucked up under his arm, together with another smaller blanket and one of his thick padded windbreakers.

Felicity gingerly lay the blanket on the ground in the small clearing, completely shielded from the sight of the road. She sat down on the plaid blanket, her eyes adjusted enough to the limited light that she could see Oliver smiling at her as he perched on the arches of his feet next to the blanket.

“Felicity,” he smiled, his head cocked to the side.  
She didn’t let him finish his no doubt cautionary tale and asking her 10 times if she wanted to do this, choosing to both silence and answer him with a kiss atop his slightly parted lips, pulling him by the splayed sides of his shirt down onto the blanket and half atop her.

Oliver forgot the words he was going to say and frankly for a moment during the rush of heat her kiss gave him – he even forgot his own name.

The spark ignited in his core, urging his body to grind instinctively against hers, craving the soft comfort being close to her gave him. His tongue delved into her mouth, capturing her tongue in a swirling ballet.

Without forethought his hands firmed against her waist, pushing one up the side of her body, eager to feel each delicate movement she made. He thumbed over the soft satin bra, his thumb toying with the lace trim. He mumbled a sighed at the difficulty his hand was having trying to connect with the soft breast that lay under her bra.

She sat up, forcing him to roll to his side and separating his lips from the crook of her neck. With her back angled towards him she lifted the hem of her tee, halting midway to allow her skin to adjust to the sudden and brisk temperature change.

Oliver kissed a trail along her lower back, tasting her dewy warm body feverishly between his lips and warming the path of goose bumps the night air was causing. He sucked in against her hip bone, moaning at the pleasure coursing through his body at just the feeling of her gave him.

Pulling off the rest of her tee she shivered at the wind, turning back towards him, rushing to feel the warmth of his body against hers. He held her tightly against his chest, his core heat radiating into her, warming her core as he buried his face under the curtain of her cascading blonde hair, eager again to taste the sweet dewiness of her skin. One hand stayed around her waist, thumbing the smoothness of her supple skin. His other hand moved around her back pinching the clasp of her bra and effortlessly springing it open with his thumb.

“You’re good at that,” she purred with a smile, her neck cocked against the amorous barrage of steamed kisses he was laying against her bare shoulder. His hand smoothed over the curve of her shoulder, slipping one of the black straps loosely down her arm.

Gently he guided her arm from the strap, his heated mouth never leaving off from the deepening kisses and light nips against the base of her neck. Silent gasps pushed through her pouted lips as she soaked up each delectable second of it.

When he was certain the strap was uncoiled from her arm, he dragged his lips across the front of her neck, dipping under her chin a quick sweep of his tongue before he reached the other side and repeated the same amorous devouring of her neck as his hand slipped the other strap down her arm.

As the bra dropped between them she gaped at the sudden flinching of cold air that assaulted them. Oliver trapped one breast beneath his cupped palm as his mouth quickly swept the other into it, exhaling his warm breath onto it, his tongue lightly flicking over her hardened nipple.

Felicity’s breath fogged against the chill of the night as he guided her back down onto the blanket, a gentle hand rounding in the arch of her back as his other hand cupped her breast, lightly stroking his fingers along it and his thumb circling her sensitive nipples.

Oliver’s lips sucked around her breast, his cheeks hollowing as he brought her deeper into his mouth goaded on by the writhing of her soft body under him, the arch of her back and the small pants of breaths he felt against the top of his head.

With a soft pop his mouth pulled away from her body. Resting his chin between her breasts he look up at her, the moonlight just barely lighting the highlights of her face.  
“Felicity” he sighed gently, his mouth poised, silently mulling over words that would make this sound less creepy, but there wasn’t really any delicate way of saying what he needed to.

She smiled expectantly at him as her hands skimmed through his hair.  
“I can’t do this without being on top, are you okay with that?”  
Her hands moved to his temples. Gently her thumbs stroked across his eyebrows, around his eyes, along his cheekbones to the bridge of nose, then down to his lips – taking each curve of his face, memorising it in her hands less they loose what little light the moon gave them.

This was Oliver, Oliver was different. She committed the feeling of his face to her memory as her hands drove down his body and across his broad shoulders. This was Oliver, he was different in almost every way.

“Yes,” she breathed with certainty.  
Oliver kissed down against her rising chest, his scruff tickling into her sensitive skin. He adjusted his body, a leg one side of her, another between her legs. He rolled up the windbreaker and gestured for her to raise her head. She did do without question, allowing him to place the jacket under her head. He placed a quick kiss on her forehead before peppering a disordered trail of hot warm kisses down her body. His tongue swept over her navel, causing her core to tighten around it.

His hands were fisted either side of her hips, only his thumbs lay against her hip bones, gently stroking small circles on them. He walked his body down, kissing atop her skirt, blowing hot air through the weave of the fabric. With one hand he reached for the second blanket and lay it kindly across her chest.

“I don’t want them to get cold,” he spoke between a playful grin.  
Leaving one fisted hand as his anchor point pushed up beside her hip, he stretched out his arm, his muscles pulling taunt as he leant back on his knees and slipped his free hand under her skirt, followed closely by his head.

He started his heated path of kisses up her leg from the curve just above her knee, kneading his chin into her soft skin, eagerly deepening each subsequent kiss. His hand moved between her legs much faster, reaching the wetness of her folds and stroking a finger gently between them.

Felicity lifted her pelvis in response to the slow stimulation. The thumb of his fisted hand stroked a slowed circle over her hip, coaxing her pelvis back down.

His finger continued to fondle her heat, switching between a light graze which caused her thighs to twitch and a harder, swifter caress which drew a long moan from her parted lips.

A single finger entered her smoothly, sticking against her contracting walls as his thumb swashed around her bundled of nerves, sending a fevered groan from her mouth into the still night. Oliver smiled against her silken upper thigh, her expressive gratitude was refreshing.

Each time he felt her pelvis rose he would use his thumb to coax it back down as his lips drew closer to her sex. His finger moved in and out of her lightly brushing against her entrance soaking in her warm wetness.

“Oliver,” she moaned as she bit in on her bottom lip.  
His mouth finally reached between her legs. He blew softly against her causing her fingers to grip into the wrist of his fisted hand.

He couldn’t hold himself back anymore as he kissed between her folds, tasting her sweet slick with a low hummed moan. He lapped his tongue against her, skirting over her entrance and drawing slowly over her clit.

Felicity felt the sensation in her core feathering down her legs as the tip of his tongue entered her while the flat of his tongue pushed against her bundled nerves. Her grip on his wrist tightened, her nails slightly digging into the inside of it making him delve his tongue deeper into her, greedily swiping it over her walls, taking her in with misted breaths and heated pants.

“Fuck Oliver,” she cried out, needing him more, wanting him longer.  
She was trying to stay where his thumb was directing her, but she wanted to move, she wanted to grind and writhe with each lap her made between her folds.

Felicity was barely holding on and Oliver could tell as he felt her walls clamping in around him. He wanted her to fall over the edge alone, to know that her pleasure was paramount and for her to feel that intimacy.

He quickened the sweeping of his tongue around her sex, mixing his fingers in cross with his tongue creating a double edged pleasure which sent a quaking spike through her body.

Her grip tightened around him, sure her nails would leave a mark.  
“Fuck Oliver,” she squealed loudly, as she felt herself let go, trembling as each wave hit her.

Oliver stayed a little longer with his mouth lapping up against her, feeling each tiny spasm her body made.

He appeared from under her skirt, licking his lips as he studied her face, her eyes closed, her breath heavy and her tongue trapped between her teeth.  
“Felicity I want to be inside you,” he spoke softly, leaning down towards her, his body careful to hover above her and not lay weight on her.

“Mmm yes, yes, do that,” she panted, still feeling the concave waves of her orgasm.  
Oliver’s shaft was thick and erect, her pleasure release hardening him without any outside effort.

He touched his fingers gently between her folds ensuring she was still wet as he lingered the tip of his penis just outside her entrance.  
She moaned against, shifting her body down, eager to feel him filling her.  
“Do it Oliver,” she pleaded, lifting her hips to make the contact.  
He entered her gently, inch by inch filling her smoothly, his weight borne on his arms, still conscious of not putting the pressure against her.

Felicity felt every inch, her insides still brimming with the sensitivity her orgasm brought her. She wanted him faster and deeper, to feel him sliding against her walls.

Her hands smoothed under his open shirt, gripping against his shoulder, pulling him deeper towards her. He needed little coaxing as he pumped harder, watching the low light dipping over the pleasure written on her face.

He was close, the remnants of her juices making a slick frictionless warmth resonate over his shaft.

The moonlight seemed brighter for a flashing moment. They were both so caught up in the moment they never heard the cracking of dry branches nearby.

Oliver was almost there. Just a few more thrusts would take him over the edge.  
“Anyone there,” a stranger’s voice cut through the air at the exact moment Oliver reached his release.

He wanted to cry out through his orgasm, but Felicity pulled him close, burying his head into her neck, his gruffed moans muted into her skin.

She saw the flashing police lights through the curtain of bushes in front of them.  
“Oliver, stay still,” she whispered, feeling his penis twitching through his orgasm inside her.

“Anyone there?” the voice called again the light dancing across the tips of the branches.

Oliver didn’t want to move, enjoying the encompassing warmth of her body around him and next to him.

“Ssshh,” she whispered into his ear as he pushed more soft groans into her neck.

The light turned away and the footsteps became distant. A car door slammed and the sound of gravel under tires echoed through the air.

“I think it’s safe,” she smiled, brushing a hand over his head and placing a tender kiss against his warm, sweaty brow.  
“See, amazing sex,” she laughed softly, thumbing along his hair line.  
He kissed her naked shoulders, curving his body around hers.

"Amazing," his words barely auditable.


	10. Las Vegas, Nevada

“We have to go,” Felicity said quietly as her fingers padded across Oliver’s chest under his open shirt.  
She was lying in the round of his shoulder, his arm wrapped tightly around her and his chin tucked low atop her head. She watched his chest rise and fall slowly allowing herself a brief relief from anything else.

“That certainly woke me up,” he smiled into a kiss against the crown of her head.  
“Happy to oblige,” she smiled, pushing her naked chest closer against his body, eager to discover his emanating heat.  
“But that officer will be sending a tow truck to collect your car, so we should get going.”  
“Shit,” Oliver cursed, bounding upright, his pants comically dropping to the ground.

* * *

  
Oliver pulled the car over into gas station about an hour later and Felicity disappeared inside to get some form of sustenance. Oliver watched from with one eye permanent trained on her given the thick darkness of the night.

She returned about 10 minutes later, with a bag slung over her wrist and two coffee cups in her hands.  
“Coffee,” Felicity smiled, handing Oliver the cup through his open window  
“So Miguel, the cashier, offered me his couch to crash on,” she waved at the young guy behind the counter inside the shop at the front of the car, the one who hadn’t stopped watching her since she left, “I’m not so sure you’re invited though,” she smiled, leaning down against the window frame.  
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” he smiled, thumbing through some papers with a pen light trained on them.  
“There’s a proper rest stop about 10 minutes up the road, get a few hours sleep before we go through to Vegas, yes?” it was phrased as a question, but Felicity wasn’t taking no for an answer.

She stood up shrugged one shoulder at Miguel, who was still watching like a loyal puppy. She waved as she walked around the front of the car, dragging a flat palm gently across it as a subtle reminder to Oliver of their earlier, interrupted, heated exchange on it.

* * *

  
As expected, about 10 minutes later Oliver was pulling off the I93 onto an almost empty truck stop, he drove past the few scattered 18-wheelers and RVs before pulling into a park under the dimly lit sheet metal awning. They were only another hour or so from Vegas, but sleep would do them both some good.

“So,” Felicity smiled running her index finger nervously across the white plastic lid of the coffee cup, “it’s probably none of my business, but are you going to tell me what we’re doing in Vegas? I assume it’s not to gamble and get married by an Elvis impersonator.”

Oliver smiled softly as he unbuckled his seatbelt and sat back in the chair, stretching out his long legs as best he could. He took one sip of the coffee before wrapping his hands around the warm cup and sighing an exhale.  
“I’m here to find my ex-wife,” he spoke, his eyes drawn downwards.  
“Oh,” Felicity responded, careful to close her slightly gaped mouth.  
“Because you still love her and you’re trying to win her back?” she questioned, with a pinched expression and a raised brow.  
Oliver chuckled lightly to himself at the suggestion, “No,” he shook his head gently, his eyes still downward  
“Okay, because that would be a little awkward,” Felicity smiled a little anxiously, stooping her head down to try and get Oliver to at least look at her.  
“We have some unfinished business,” he blinked up at her quickly, before retreating his eye line back down, _she_ was not something he spoke of.

“I feel like that sounded more ominous than you meant it to, like taser her, drive her into the desert and you know…grrrgh,” Felicity drew a finger across her neck as she made the accompanying sound.

Oliver looked up, his bemused eyes trained on her.  
“Nothing like that,” he smiled, his head softly shaking from side to side.  
“Good, because I don’t do so well in Police custody, I’m pretty sure I would rat you out in a heartbeat.”  
Her attempt at lightening what felt like a sombre mood seemed to work as Oliver didn’t look down again.

“No, you’re far too pretty for a jail cell,” he winked light-heartedly before taking another sip and then setting the cup down in the holder.  
“Phew,” Felicity smiled, her hand gently resting on his, laying motionless on his lap.  
“Did she take the coffee maker you were supposed to get?” Felicity asked, immediately regretting her nervous habit when he looked up at her pained.

“I’m sorry, I say dumb things when I get a little nervous, or awkward,” she stammered apologetically  
Oliver looked at her softly, his eyes slightly hooded, his mouth expressionless and still.

It had been a story he had told himself – relived even – many times, but it was one he rarely spoke about out loud and it was one he never entrusted to someone he’d known for roughly 140 hours. But when he looked at Felicity, her kind eyes trying to smooth across his and her softly parted mouth that was curved into a delicately natural smile, he felt a sense of ease. He wanted to tell her what he held close to his chest – not out of obligation but because it just felt like the most natural thing to do.

He pulled his wallet from his pocket and thumbed under his licence, pulling out the worn photo Felicity had seen their first night together.  
“Her name is Madeline,” he sighed, thumbing the picture softly, “she’s my daughter. She’s who I’m looking for, who I have been looking for, for over a year, ever since my ex-wife took her from me.”

He took a second photo from his wallet, one Felicity had not noticed when she found the first. This photo was newer, a beautiful little toddler with a tumble of golden hair framing her cherub face, sitting proudly on a black swing set in the middle of a busy playground. She was young, maybe two, but the similarities between her and Oliver were striking – even in the limited light afforded to them it was obvious it was his daughter.

Felicity didn’t have any words to say and in the moment she didn’t feel any would be right to say even if she did, so she took his hand into hers and squeezed it tightly. She was there to listen.

“We were high school sweethearts, Laurel and I, we were stupid, in love and 19 when she got pregnant so we thought why not add marriage to this mix,” he chuckled softly between a sigh. “we got married on a beach, literally barefoot and pregnant.”

He took a drawn breath.  
“Before Maddie was born I picked up more work, desperate to make enough so my daughter could have everything she needed, I spent less time at home and I neglected Laurel. Maddie was born, December 2005, four days before Christmas, she was perfect. In that tiny girl I saw the very best of what life could be. I spent every minute I was at home with her, I guess that is when Laurel started to resent us both and hate the mediocracy of the life she had.”

He paused, thumbing over a permanent indent only he saw on his ring finger.  
“I’m not sure when I lost her, but by the time I realised it, she was already gone. She slept with people to hurt me, people I knew, people I didn’t, it didn’t matter to her, it only mattered that I found out about each and every one. I tried to hang on, focus on Maddie, but that just incensed her more.”

Another drawn breath followed by a soft tear trailing down his cheek.  
“She decided to reinvent herself with whatever drugs she could get her hands on, to punish me at first, to show me how far I’d pushed her. I tried, I tried everything I knew. I spent every last cent I had putting her into a rehab facility, she walked away within a week telling me it was my fault and she wasn’t ready yet. I tried.”

Felicity felt his fingers grip around hers as she gently placed her palm on the round on his knee, silently consoling him.

“I tried to make the pieces fit, to force us to work, but that just drove her further away. The last straw came when I came home and found her passed out on the couch, naked with a guy I’d never seen before surrounded by drugs and my 8 month old daughter sitting in the midst of it. I was so angry at her, I hated her. She was arrested and I filed for divorce the next day. I watched them take her away, screaming and kicking, swearing that she would never forgive me for what I turned her into.”

He dropped his chin to his chest and blinked a tear from his eye, his hand was shaking in Felicity’s hand and his lip was quivering with each stunted breath.

“Your daughter, she was okay?” Felicity asked, gently rubbing her thumb across his knee.  
Oliver nodded.  
“Thankfully she was. I was granted sole custody and we lived a good life, just Maddie and me. Laurel was sent to a state funded rehab, she wrote often apologising for what happened between us, that she was depressed and felt unloved. She was released a few months before Maddie’s second birthday. She came around asking for a second chance, saying that I was the love of her life, that she only ever wanted me.”

Oliver blinked up, his tear stained eyes looking for the silent comfort he found in hers.  
“I didn’t love her anymore, I knew we couldn’t go back to that, but I wanted her to be in Maddie’s life, to be a mother, but not my wife. She was angry but the Laurel I knew wasn’t a bad person so when she came back a month later and asked to be in Maddie’s life I thought that it was the right thing to let her be. I thought she was trying until she tried to kiss me one visit and I realised it had never been about Madeline. I told her that we were never going to be together again, that I didn’t love her anymore, that Madeline was my sole focus. She was livid, she smashed every window on this car.”

He blinked up, looking out at the stars in the clear night around them, he knew how the story ended and he was about to relive one of the most painful moments in his life.

“Madeline didn’t understand, she cried for her mother and I felt nothing but guilt, so when Laurel came back a week later, the day before Maddie’s second birthday and begged to take her to the park down the road by herself so she could focus on being a mother without having to see me and deal with a broken heart, I actually thought she meant it. I told her to go for an hour, I would come down after that because Madeline had a swimming lesson. That was the day after this photo was taken,” he sighed, rubbing his hand across the face in the photo, his whole jaw was quivering as tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

“That was the last time I saw Madeline or Laurel. When I went to go find them, they weren’t there. A neighbour said she saw them walk a couple of houses down and get into a dark car. Laurel took the one thing from me that she knew would destroy me completely. She just drove away and I’ve spent every day since then looking for them. Every time I get close, I get a tip, she’s gone before I get there.”

“Oliver, I’m so sorry,” Felicity sniffed, desperate to close the gap between them, to hold him tightly against her chest, but unsure if she should.  
“What happens if you find her in Vegas, will to take Madeline back?” she asked.  
“I can’t, I can’t just take her, child services need to. So I need to know where she is, without her knowing I know so she stays long enough for the bureaucracy to get through the tape and give Maddie back to me. If I just take her I could jeopardise my own parental rights. They say that’s acting like a vigilante of sorts, my hands are tied.”

“You’ll find her Oliver, you’ll get her back,” Felicity breathed, gently kissing against his cheek, capturing the small tear that was making a track down it between her lips.  
“You deserve your daughter, you love her the way a parent should.”

“I don’t even know if Maddie would remember me, you know?” he spoke softly folding his lips on to each other, trying to hold back the flood of emotion sitting just under the surface.  
Felicity stroked his other cheek with his palm, her other hand still tightly woven in with his. He turned to face her, her eyes smiling down through her cheeks at him.  
“Yours is not a face she could forget Oliver, you are her father, she will know you, I bet you she never forgot you.”

Oliver lay his head back down against Felicity, the gentle warmth of her breath against his head and the soft echo of her heartbeat brought him a quiet comfort.

Oliver felt the emotions surge forward, the heartbreak of that day he aimlessly spent hours running and driving through streets trying to find them. The moment the police told him they hadn’t found her yet and that everything had been cleared out of her tiny apartment in the Glades.

He felt an echo of the heart-wrenching hours he spent in the weeks after, sitting at the foot of Madeline’s toddler bed holding her little pink floppy eared bunny in his hands staring at a gun on the floor debating what he could do with it.

He used that gun and his exceptionally hard right upper cut to extract information from every low life that had ever been in the same circumference as Laurel. It was during this descent into a person he was not proud of, that he met Roy, just a kid in a red hoodie, barely 16 and Oliver pointed a gun at his forehead and threatened to pull the trigger. From the fear in the teenager’s eyes, Oliver saw what he’d become. So, he offered Roy a job and Roy offered him a lead.

By the time Oliver got to California, where the lead took him, Laurel and Maddie were gone, but he had a trail. A trail he hadn’t stopped following between jobs that took him around the country. And now, now Oliver was close, he could feel it in his bones. Vegas would give him his daughter back.

Only, he wasn’t aware of the saying that life gives with one hand while it takes away with the other.

* * *

  
They woke just after 8am, a mere five hours after they had fallen asleep in their respective front seats, their hands overlapped in the centre console, holding tightly on to each other in a way that both of them needed in equal parts.

Oliver had ventured into the café now open at the stop to get some form of sustenance for the relatively short trip they had to get over the state line into Nevada and then the short drive to Vegas itself.

Felicity sat on the closed lid of the toilet, her arms propped up on her knees, her head buried in her palms as she tried to stem the overwhelming sense of trepidation she could feel welling up inside her.

She wanted to vomit, to remove everything from inside her. She wanted to desperately find the part of her that didn’t give a fuck about anyone else or anything else. She needed that side of her like she had never needed it before.

She was stuck between a rock and a hard place and no option seemed like the right one. If she stayed with Oliver – which her heart wanted to – then he would have to take her back to Starling and she wouldn’t survive that.

The other choice – to leave him in Vegas and disappear into an underground world she was familiar with and could use to disappear across the border into California and then down through to Mexico – was the one she struggled with the strength to go through with.

Somewhere between Florida and the toilet stall in this truck stop of the I93 she had let Oliver get too close. She had fallen for him and even more painfully, she believed he had fallen for her too.

She would be okay with hurting her own heart, after all it wasn’t the first time, but the idea that she could hurt him was her struggle – that was the reason her head hung low and she wanted to vomit – to purge it all away.

She wondered for a moment if she just sat here long enough whether he would give up and leave, a wistful thought.

She knew there was no third choice, no other option available to her. However this ended, it would not end happily. In her mind, Felicity wasn’t allowed a happy ending.

“One more night Felicity, one more night, then you leave. Tomorrow you leave, no exceptions,” she chanted, pushing her thumb into the scar on her wrist, “You don’t go back, you run.”

She closed her eyes, silently repeating the mantra. _You don’t go back, you run._

* * *

  
With a freshly washed face and a skilfully placed smile on her face Felicity met Oliver back at the car where he handed her a fresh bagel and a steaming hot cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” he smiled as she sat into the seat.  
“For what?” Felicity asked, picking off a portion of the bagel in her fingertips  
“For listening,” he replied, turning the key in the ignition.  
“It’s a story I don’t find easy to tell, but you’re easy to talk to,” he smiled, almost bashfully.

Felicity smiled in response as she swallowed down her true feelings – a rancid mix of guilt, regret and sadness.  
_You don’t go back, you run._

* * *

  
Oliver pulled into the valet service entrance of the MGM Grand, sideways watching the reaction on Felicity’s face.

She looked around the familiar area “What are we doing here?”  
Oliver smiled wildly.  
“I figured while in Vegas we could stay somewhere that might be a little more caviar, a little less tinned tuna,” he laughed, pulling to a stop at the front door  
“I don’t need-,“ she started before her placed a hand on her leg.  
“I know, you don’t need any of this,” he mocked, “don’t get too excited, it’s not a skyloft or anything.”  
He stepped from the car and grabbed their bags.  
Felicity smiled as he set the bags over of his shoulder, despite the porter’s offer to take them, then offered his hand to Felicity as she too stepped from the car.

She had decided to not think about tomorrow until that hour came, for now she would just enjoy today.  
“We’re just here for the valet parking for your car, aren’t we?” she laughed into his ear.  
“You know it,” he winked in response.

They stepped into the opulent foyer, a dazzling array of likes and gold tones, it was the epitome of Vegas luxury.  
“I’m going to check in,” Oliver smiled, instinctively running a hand down her arm as he stepped away.

Felicity wrapped her arms around her waist, it had been a while since she had been part of this lifestyle. She watched Oliver approach the front desk, allowing herself for a brief moment to imagine a simple life where they were just ordinary travellers experiencing all the glitz and glam of a city renowned for it.

“We’ll freshen up in the room, then I have a place to visit,” Oliver said, rolling the hotel key card idly through his fingers.  
“Freshen up? Is that what you want to call it?” she joked, plucking the card from his fingers, “you know what, I’m just going to check something with the desk, stay here, I’ll be back in a minute,” she hugged gently against him before retracing his steps back to the front desk.

“Hi,” she smiled at the youngish guy behind the desk, “Nolan, you don’t know me do you?” she read his name tag as she casually tapped her fingers on the desk.  
“No ma’am, sorry,” he replied barely looking up.  
“No problem, Nolan. I wonder if you could tell ask your manager Brian if I could have a word?” she popped a full teeth smile as she pointed to the _Manager on Duty_ sign behind the desk.  
“Is there a problem ma’am?” Nolan asked, with a practiced front desk kindness.  
“Nope not at all Nolan,” she smiled, “Brian and I go way back, just tell him Felicity Kuttler wanted to say hi,” she continued, ending with a quick and playful thumbs up.

“Felicity Kuttler, like Mr...,” his voice trailed off as he adopted a straighter stance.  
“There you go Nolan, you do know me after all,” she winked.  
“I’m just going to get Brian, uh, Mr Michaels,” he nodded nervously as he scuttled around the corner.  
“Thank you Nolan,” she called after him.

A few minutes later a well dressed man with salt and pepper hair in a three piece suit appeared with a broad smile.  
“Miss Kuttler, well I never,” the older gentleman with a thick and carefully protected English accent declared with a unreserved familiarity.  
“Hi Brian, long time no see,” Felicity sighed, releasing she could on the surface slot right back into her old life.  
“We haven’t seen you in these parts for a long time.”  
“Summers abroad, you know the drill,” she shrugged softly.  
“So, to what do we owe the pleasure, is your father staying with us? I wasn’t aware,” he straightened his jacket down his body.  
“No, no, I’m here with my new squeeze,” she pointed over her shoulder at Oliver who had taken a phone call.  
“He doesn’t seem the usual type,” Brian joked.  
“He’s not. Not a trust fund or silver spoon in sight. It’s cute actually, he wanted a nice little trip down to Vegas, insisted he do the chivalrous thing and pay for it. We’re staying on the fourth floor, I’ve never been on that floor, it’s exciting,” she casually jested.

“And your father knows about this trip?” his foot tapped against the tiled floor.  
“I’ll probably call him tonight, tell him we made it down here,” she paused, blinking up as she leant against the desk, “tell him exactly where we’re staying,” she smiled holding up the fourth floor key card.

Brian plucked the card out from her fingers and tapped on the keyboard in front of him and a minute later placed a different card between her fingers.  
“Call him from one of the skyloft rooms Felicity, upgrade on the house.”  
She stood up and smiled brightly.  
“Aww, you didn’t have to do that Brian,” she smiled, blinking her sparkling blue eyes.  
“It’s always our pleasure,” he nodded back.  
“You two. Amazing,” she blew a quick kiss at them before strolling back to Oliver.

“Everything okay?” he asked, slipping his phone back into his pocket.  
“Yeah, funny thing happened, they gave us a free upgrade,” she folded the key card into his palm, her bottom lip folding under her teeth, “imagine that,” she took a few steps towards the elevators before he gently caught her arm in his hand.

“Felicity, this is a skyloft room, you’re charming, but not that charming,” Oliver remarked.  
“How?” he questioned, his eyes narrowing in on hers.  
She rolled her lips over each other and furrowed her brow as she softly batted her long lashes.  
“Fe...li..city....the truth please,” he smiled.  
“The last name Kuttler affords me some perks in this city, free upgrades to fancy rooms is one of them,” she frowned lightly catching his hand into her own, “don’t get all right and wrong about it, can’t we just enjoy it, just tonight,” she pleaded, dropping her head to the side.  
“Lead the way,” he laughed, shifting the bag on his shoulder.

* * *

  
“This seems a little excessive,” Oliver laughed when the private butler finally let the spacious loft room.  
“I know, isn’t it hilarious,” Felicity breathed, dragging her fingertips across the smooth oak billiard table.  
“How the other half lives, aye,” Oliver thumbed through his phone looking for something as he pulled the torn paper from Texas from his wallet.

“What’s that?” Felicity asked, smoothing her palm down his back.  
“We need to go here now, my source says this is where Laurel works,” Oliver said, flicking the paper between his fingers.

Felicity looked down at the paper and smiled.  
“Oliver, darling, this is a strip club. A nice one, but a strip club nevertheless.”  
“I know,” Oliver shrugged.  
“Oliver,” she hummed against his neck, “it’s the middle of the day.”  
Oliver nodded.  
“You can’t go to a strip club in the middle of the day, you’ll stand out like a handsome son of a bitch in a crowd full of balding middle aged men with beer guts. If your ex wife is there now she will see you, you need to go tonight, with a larger crowd,” she patted his cheek gently, watching his eyes flickering through his thought process.

She was right. Laurel couldn’t know he was here.  
“So what do you suppose we do?” he smiled, gently caressing her back as he pulled her into an embrace.

“I have a few ideas, but they all involve you being naked, there,” she pointed outside, “there,” she pointed back to the billiard table, “and literally all over there,” she laughed, hovering her hand up towards the lofted bedroom.

“Mmmm,” he sighed, leaning down into her neck and placing a light littering under the curtain of her hair, “we could start here,” he exhaled the words into her skin as his hand gestured back towards the billiard table.

 

 

 


	11. Las Vegas Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little do you know  
> How I'm breaking while you fall asleep  
> Little do you know  
> I'm still haunted by the memory  
> Little do you know  
> I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece
> 
> ~Little Do You Know  
> Alex & Sierra

“So, we’ve done the pool table…,” Oliver started, his arms wrapped around Felicity as she lay with her head atop his chest and her body entwined with his, under a crisp white sheet Oliver had appropriated from one of the beds.  
“Billiard table,” she corrected, between softly placed kisses against his shoulder.  
“Aren’t they the same thing?” he smiled, his fingers combing through her slightly mattered hair.

She shifted in the far-too-narrow-for two-people striped orange sun lounger on the lofted deck beside the plunge pool. The warm Nevada late afternoon breeze billowing the sheet around her just enough that she held a palm flat against it to stop it revealing their bodies underneath it.

“This is a fancy as fuck place Oliver, that is a billiard table, it’s a different size and it doesn’t have pockets,” she smiled, pinching in her cheeks and smiling through her take on a posh British accent.  
“Well who am I to argue with that,” he smiled at the sensation of her naked body propped up against his.  
“So, we’ve done the _billiard_ table,” he pulled her tighter towards him as he spoke, “and we’ve done the sun lounger, so now where to?” he kissed her forehead, inhaling the sweet scent of her that he had come to know.

“I’m not sure you can handle anymore old man,” she laughed as she walked her fingertips up his inner thigh under the sheet, “wouldn’t want you to strain a muscle,” she purred, stroking the underside of his, for the moment, flaccid member.

She propped her chin onto his chest and blinked up at him as his fingertips ran serene tracks down the silken groove of her spine.  
“Felicity,” he breathed, his body warm against hers, lapping in the feeling of peace having her in his arms afforded him.  
“Mmmm?” she responded, placing a feathering of kisses atop his chest, her eyes still blinking upwards at him  
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he exhaled with his lips slowly folding upwards into a contented smile, his eyes slowly drawing closed in the high afternoon sun.

Felicity froze, her lips ghosted above his chest and her eyes widened apprehensively.  
_How could he say that?_  
_You don’t go back, you run._  
_I think I’m falling in love with you._

Felicity stood up, taking the sheet with her, and ran down the stairs, disappearing through the doors.

It took a second for Oliver to register the swiftness of her departure and his sudden nakedness. He wrapped a nearby towel around his body and hurried down the steps and inside the room after her.

“Felicity?” he called out, reaching the open patio doors.  
“You shouldn’t say that,” she pleaded, her eyes puckered inwards and glassed over with held back tears.  
“I didn’t mean to scare you, I just-,“ he started to speak, his hands reaching for her, which she backed away from.  
“No, you shouldn’t say things like that, you shouldn’t say things you don’t mean,” she cried, clutching the wrapped sheet tightly around her body as she backed up against the wall of the staircase behind her.

“Who said I didn’t mean it? I know its sudden, and it’s a little crazy, but I’ve never felt-,“ he took a step forward and she pushed herself further into the wall.

“Stop it, stop saying that. Stop saying things you don’t mean,” her voice was shaking, her body curling into itself – the sudden urge to vomit was back.  
“Felicity, I do mean it, I never felt like this with anyone, you, you’re special,” his hand reached for her face, landing gently against her cheek.

Her lips trembled as her eyes fluttered back the looming tears.  
_You’re special_ the words made her winch internally.  
“Don’t tell me I’m special and don’t say things you don’t mean. This is just sex Oliver, it’s just fucking, it’s not love and I’m not special. Please,” she leaned into his hand, “please don’t tell me that I’m special.”  
“I’m not going to lie to you Felicity. This isn’t just sex to me,” Oliver calmly replied, his thumb sweeping back a solitary tear that was marring a trail down her cheek.

“That’s all it was for me,” she stared downwards, pulling her face away from his warm hand.  
“I’m sorry, I thought you knew,” she finished, taking his hand as it hung in mid-air into her own and folding it back down by his side.

She slid to the side of him and fled up the stairs, the excess of the white sheet trailing along behind her.

Oliver wrung his hands pensively over each other pain etched in the lines of his face. He heard every word she spoke, every infliction caught between the words and every intention captured in the sentences. But he also saw her face, the trembling lips and the glassiness of the trapped tears in her eyes.

They were at odds with each other.

Felicity sat on the corner of the bed, her nails digging into her scalp and tears burning tracks down her arms as she cried into her palms. This wasn’t how she intended it to end, but she tried to convince herself that shattering the image he seemed to have carved of her now, would stop him caring when she walked from his life.

Her barefoot tapped against the bag at her feet.  
_Get up._  
_Get dressed._  
_Get out._  
She couldn’t even do the first thing.

“No, I don’t accept that,” Oliver said calmly, his hand poised on the doorframe of the bedroom.  
Felicity looked up and he saw it. It may have been hidden behind wet peachy cheeks and red eyes, but it was there – the truth, it wasn’t just about sex for her either.

“Oliver, please,” she cried, batting the tears away with the back of her hand.  
“Look me in the eyes and tell me again this was just sex to you.”  
He stood mere feet from her.  
She looked up at him, searching for the strength to say what she needed to.  
_This was just sex._  
The blueness of his eyes in the mid afternoon sun reflecting around the room caught her by surprise. There was no malice in his words and no deceit in the way he spoke them, the knowledge of which made this even harder for her.

She stood from bed, the sheet spilling onto the floor as she continued to hold it tightly to her chest. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t tell him what she needed to or what she wanted to.

She stepped away from him, turning her back on him and hanging her head low to mask the bitter tears marring her face.

Oliver watched as the sheet gaped open across her back, exposing the creamy silk of her skin. He watched as her body trembled under the weight of her tears.

“You can’t can you? You can’t look me I the eyes and tell me this wasn’t something more,” he spoke softly, his hand smoothing over the round of her neck, his thumb dragging down her jaw, blindly wiping away the tears that blemished her skin.

She swallowed back the tears, closing her eyes to the soft sensation of his hand smoothing across her face. He represented so much more – but she just couldn’t.

“What do you want from me?” she sighed, twisting her head over her shoulder, her sad eyes finally meeting with his as his hand fell from her face.  
“The truth, just tell me the truth,” Oliver pleaded, his lips curved around a warmed smile.  
“Why?” she shook her head softly, “so you can come in and be my knight in shining armour, here to rescue me?” she continued, her eyes lidded and her lips poised open, a slight harshness in her tone.

“That’s not why,” his lips pursed at the lingering bitterness in her tone.  
“Then why Oliver? Why does any of it matter to you?” she shrugged through the words, old tears still trailing their way down her face.  
“Because I care about you,” he paused, desperate to lay his hands on her, but she moved away again.  
“I meant what I said out there” he gestured out the window “I think I’m falling for you, falling in...”

“Don’t,” she winched at his words, “you don’t love me Oliver, you only love the idea of me. I’m not the person you think I am. I’m not the person you want me to be.”  
She turned her body to face him, her expression a pained one and her lips still trembling with each word she spoke.  
“I’m not your chance at redemption, I’m not the merit badge you earn for your good deeds and I don’t need to be rescued, to be saved.”  
She swallowed back the agony she felt as each word slowly dripped for her mouth.

“I know you don’t need saving. I’m not offering you salvation,” he spoke through a drawn exhale, “I’m just offering you a chance.”  
He stepped forward, closing the gap that had formed, his body now dangerously close.  
“A chance at what?” she sighed, her hand touching anxiously against her shoulder, her arms still closely wrapped across her chest.

“A chance to know,” he gently touched his hand to cup her neck, his fingers brushing through her curtain of silk hair as his thumb trailed behind, slowly skating a path along her jawline, “you told me you wanted to know Felicity, that you wanted to know what us would be like. I’m offering you an us.”  
He pulled her close, stooping his body just enough as he mirrored his other hand behind her neck and gently tilted her head till her eyes met with his.  
“This is what an us feels like,” he whispered in a breath as his lips gently settled onto hers.

Her lips were quivering beneath his as he enveloped her bottom lip, tasting the bitter saltiness of the tears that had trekked their path over her lips. He felt her breath warm against his skin as her body tremored against his.

She felt his body stabilize against hers as her body faltered, her knees weakened and she fell against his firm chest. She was caught in a freefall of emotion and desperate for a soft place to land.

Releasing the kiss but with his hands still holding against her, he whispered words that she barely heard, but felt them as his lips spoke them against her cheek, “know us.”

Her face dropped from his hands as she took a step back, her tired eyes searching across his. She was tired of running, tired of the pretence and tired of the veil she lived behind.

Her lips parted, a soft breath of air pushing through them as she dropped her arms and let the sheet billow to the floor in a puffed cloud of white.  
“Will you hold me, like this, just as I am? Naked, scarred, bent and almost broken,” she blinked back tears and her fingers gently trickled down her arm.  
“Will you take me at my worst, my most vulnerable and not use that against me? If I asked you, would you just hold me, just as I am?” she finished, her voice soft but clear, her shoulder nervously raised towards her cheek, her body shifting its weight from one foot, slowly to the other.

“Yes,” he replied simply, his arms wrapping around her body, drinking in the feeling of her naked and soft body pushed up against his.

In his arms she felt so small, so fragile.  
In his arms she felt safe.

* * *

  
Oliver watched the minutes on the clock slowly flick over as he lay in the middle of the impressively large bed, an ocean of empty space around him as Felicity lay asleep beside him. Her soft breath warmed against his shoulder, a spray of blond hair cascaded down his arm and her chest slowly raised and fell against his.

He had wanted to ask her what she ran from, what it was she was scared to return to, but instead he let her sleep. He let her take from him what she wanted, what she needed, a place to feel safe.

She stirred in his arms, inhaling against his warm and inviting shoulder.  
“What time is it?” she asked quietly, aware from the view out the window that they sun had gone down some time ago.  
“Just after 8,” he smiled against the crown of her head.  
“We should go, you have a strip club to visit,” she laughed softly, aware of the delicate balance of emotions that hung in the air around them.

“You should stay here,” he spoked softly, unravelling his arm from around her as he slipped out from under the covers, the towel still neatly around his waist. He had done as she’d ask, he had just held her, just as she was.

She sat up on an elbow, her body hidden beneath the blankets.  
“I know that I owe you words, an apology, an explanation,” she breathed, swiping away a straggling tear, “I owe you something.”

He sighed as he sat back down beside her, his hand gently resting atop her shoulder.  
“I don’t know what you’re running from, what you’re scared to face or to feel. But it wasn’t that long ago that you told me that it was okay to be scarred, that it made us human. Felicity,” he sighed, “the same is true of fear, being afraid makes us human. But you don’t have to be afraid of me, you don’t have to be afraid of us.”

He cupped her face tenderly and watched her body melt into it and her eyes softly close at the comfort of his touch.  
“You don’t owe me a thing, but I will always be here to hear it if you want to tell me.”

She pulled her lips back into a faded smile.  
“I do, I want to tell you,” she blinked away, struggling to finds words, “but not now, please not tonight,” she sat up, burying her face into his shoulder.  
“Tonight let me help you find your daughter,” she kissed his shoulder gently as her eyes walked up to meet his.

She focused her heart into a smile, blinking away the words she wasn’t saying… _not now, not tonight…but in the morning I’ll be gone._

_You don’t stay. You run._

* * *

  
Oliver stepped into the bustling nightlife of the city around him, the noise and lights filling every sense. It was unsurprising to him that people came here to get lost, he had only strayed mere feet from the entrance and he felt lost.

He had asked Felicity to stay behind, telling her that this was something he needed to do on his own, the reality was virtually the opposite, he would have enjoyed her company, relished it even, but it hadn’t been long enough for him to forget where he found her – the strip club he had carried her unconscious from – and he didn’t want to be a part of putting her back in the path of that life.

She hadn’t said a word to him as she watched him leave and honestly a part of him didn’t expect her to be there when he got back. The thought of it was crippling – he was still so sure he could help her back in Starling City – but he wasn’t naïve to the possibility that she could absconder before he returned.

Whatever her choice, he would try and understand it.

He took a deep breath of the tempered night air. For now he had only one focus, and honestly he had no idea where he was going.

He searched around his immediate area, looking for a sign that might tell him which direction to start walking. His mind was a mixture of emotions to the point where he found himself not thinking straight.

It was his job to find people amongst larger haystacks of people and he was damn good at it, but tonight he stood alone, his feet planted to the floor, his heart anxiously fearing it was already too late – Laurel would have moved on and he would have missed yet another chance – he was fearful his heart couldn’t take another blow like that. Every time he reached the end of a trail and they were already gone, his heart broke again. Again and again he was transported back to the spot on the floor by Madeline’s bed where his eyes grew dark and his heart never quite recovered.

“Are you lost?” a soft voice said from beside him.  
Oliver, startled, looked down and realised he had stood himself unreasonably close to a woman not much older than him.

She was tall, barely a few inches shorter than him, her long blond hair was straightened, swept and pinned back at the sides the rest falling flat against her back. Her eyes were a deep brown, surrounded in perfectly curved black liner that smoked at corners all hidden behind black framed glasses that sat high up her nose.

She was wearing a grey knit pencil skirt and a billowing white blouse, accented with a bow that draped under her neck. She looked like she had stepped out from a nearby office or library. She was beautiful in a way that seemed almost out of place.

“No not exactly,” Oliver smiled briefly, for some reason his feet still firmly planted to the ground.  
“Well then, you must be in the right place,” she replied, her rouged lips turning up into a smile.  
“I guess I must be,” he replied casually, his eyes drawing back to the top floor of the MGM Grand, where he had, regretfully now, left Felicity.

“You give me your name and your room number. You go inside and add the name Matilda Smith to your room. I come in fifteen minutes later and collect a key from the front desk. I’ll say my name when I knock on your door. Price depends on what you want,” she smiled, folding a hand under the lapel of his jacket.

“There you are,” a familiar voice perked up from behind.  
Oliver turned to see Felicity a step behind him.

The woman smiled softly at Felicity, “that would be extra, although I may make an exception for her, she’s cute.”

“Aww, no. I mean thanks, you’re exceptionally good looking, but we’re fine, this one is new to the place,” Felicity smiled, trying to contain her laughter behind her folded lips.

The woman shrugged and took a few steps away as Felicity pulled Oliver by the arm, putting further distance between them.

“What just happened?” Oliver asked, confused.  
“She’s a prostitute Oliver,” Felicity chuckled under her breath.  
“But she looks like a librarian,” he glanced back towards her – a good looking librarian.  
“I think maybe that’s the point,” Felicity’s smile brimmed off her face.

“You need to drive to the strip club you want, and I’m afraid if I don’t come with you, you might get yourself arrested for hiring a prostitute. So I’m coming, are we clear?”  
Oliver nodded, to tell the truth he was glad she had chosen to ignore his request to stay behind.

* * *

  
“Just stay in the car,” Oliver said, folding the black beanie onto his head.  
“You look like you’re about to rob the place, I’m not missing this,” she laughed, pulling an almost identical beanie from the glove box and smoothing it over her curled hair.  
“Please, just stay here,” he sighed, trying to hide the smile she always managed to pull from him.  
Her hand grabbed at his wrist as he shifted his weight to step from the car.  
“Oliver, I can help you, I know this place.”  
“Like you _know_ most of this town, I understand, but still.”  
“No Oliver, I know this place,” she insisted.  
“You danced here?”  
“My mother did, I would come with her sometimes,” she looked over the impressive size of the place, neon lights loudly declaring what you would find inside, “Nothing looks to have changed.”  
“I’m a guy with money, it shouldn’t be a problem getting in there,” Oliver jested.  
“And then what? Ask around for her? You look like someone they’re not going to give shit to and in 10 minutes she’ll know some stiff backed out of towner was looking for her. Oliver, I can get the information you need, let me be useful, please.”

* * *

  
It was unsurprisingly busy inside, lights flashed, music boomed off ever surface and a cacophony of cat calls, whistling and other variations of the same thing filled the room.

Felicity took Oliver’s hand and led him to an empty corner a slightly pained expression drawing across her face.  
“Oliver, I’m going to say things and do things here to get the information we need,” she spoke close to his ear so he heard every word over the music, “I need you to trust me, it’s just a role I’m playing to serve a purpose. Whatever I say and whatever I do, it’s not real, okay?” she pushed her hand into his chest, holding it there as her eyes blinked upwards, her bottom lip snagged under her teeth.

He nodded slowly, he understood what she was trying to say. She needed to put on the same façade he had seen back in Florida and she needed him to not judge her because of it.

“You need to keep this closed,” she kissed his lips quickly “and these, in here,” she smiled placing his hands into the pockets of his black double-breasted pea coat.  
“Okay?” she asked, smoothing her hands down his arms.  
“Okay,” he replied, his hands locked into place.

Felicity took a deep breath, shut her eyes and found her focus as she popped a stick of spearmint gum in her mouth.

She walked straight towards the bar, gently sliding her way past three other people who were waiting to be served.  
“Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here? I’ll have a gin mixed with cranberry and add a splash of Cointreau and a lime wedge,” she spoke coyly as she tapped her nails on the black and chrome framed bar top.

The tall 40-something looked up from the drink he was pouring.  
“That’s a disgusting drink concoction blast from the past,” he laughed, instantly locking eyes with Felicity, “your mother had shit taste.”  
“More than you know Sean,” Felicity smiled between pursed lips.  
He nodded her over to a less crowded section of the bar as he wiped his hands on a dish towel and stepped out from behind the bar, leaving the other two younger bartenders to it.

“What brings you back here Felicity, your mom never wanted this life for you, and if my math is correct you’re not old enough to be ordering drinks,” he said kindly, taking the stance of someone who appeared as a fatherly figure, his bulky arms folded across his broad chest.

“I just need to see Maurice, I need some information,” Felicity spoke coyly.  
“If you ask him for a job I’m going to kick your ass right out of here, you’re better than this,” Sean spoke genuinely, still choosing to ignore Oliver stood behind her.  
“Not here for a job Sean, I just need to get into the big man’s office.”  
“And this guy?” he finally acknowledge Oliver’s presence, nodding towards him.  
“Just a friend,” she replied bluntly, “Can you get me in?” she finished, narrowing her eyes at the man that had, once upon a time, let her colour in behind the bar.

He pondered the request through a furrowed brow and pushed together lips before he let out an exhaled ‘gah’  
“Come on then,” he muttered, gesturing for her to follow his lead.

They stepped out into the grand foyer where opulent hues of golds and purples decorated every wall, large armchairs sat around small tables dispersed between golden statues and marbled columns.

Sean led them through the scattering of people being served by almost naked cocktail waitresses, to the curved staircase that hugged the wall and ran around the balcony of the second storey.

They followed him up the stairs, Oliver keeping his head low in case for some reason someone would relay his description to Laurel or if, even more unfortunately, they ran into her personally.

Sean stopped outside a frosted glass door and pointed for them to take a seat to the side of it. Felicity sat, but Oliver opted to stand against the wall, tucking his head low to his chest.

There was muffled talking and bouts of silence behind the frosted glass door until Sean came out moments later and ushered them inside. He briefly nodded a knowing smile at Felicity and barely glanced at Oliver as they stepped into the office.

“No shit, you’re a spitting image of your mother and she was always my favourite,” a rotund man cajoled as he stood up from behind the mahogany desk.

Oliver noted he was wearing at least two too many gold chains around his neck which stood out garishly against the backdrop of a fine Italian suit. He would have been somewhere close to 60, but he carried his age well and he clearly dyed his hair.

“Maurice you dirty old fucker,” Felicity laughed between a pursed smirk.  
“Marty says you left on the shoulder of some guy who paid too much money for you, is this the fucker?” he nodded his head of smoothed back hair towards Oliver as he walked around to the front of the desk

“Florida wasn’t really working out for me,” she smiled, folding a hand under the lapel of his wool blend suit jacket.  
“So, why are you here?” he asked before making his path back to the chair he had just stood up from  
“I’m looking for someone,” Felicity replied simply.  
“And the silent brooding muscle behind you?” he looked past Felicity at Oliver who, as promised, remained silent.  
“Just a ride,” she perched herself on the edge of his desk her fingers thumbing across the rolodex he kept there, “Are you going to help a girl out?”

“You asked the same thing when you called me on the phone and I got you the job with cousin Marty. My ledger would say it’s your turn to help me out,” he cocked his head to the side and leaned into the back of the desk chair

“Marty is an ass hat, he got enough cash not to miss me, ask that fucker for your cut if you care all that much. So are you helping me out for good karma’s sake or am I walking my sweet ass out of this place and into the next one?” she spoke, a decidedly sassy attitude filling her tone.

“How about you sit that sweet ass down here and ask Santa nicely,” Maurice laughed, patting his lap as he starred back at Oliver.  
It was a very simple pissing contest and Oliver was itching, with a clenched fist, to end the contest in one punch.

_I need you to trust me, it’s just a role I’m playing to serve a purpose. Whatever I say and whatever I do, it’s not real_

Oliver didn’t even blink, despite every inclination to the contrary burning a hole inside him.

“Listen Maurice,” Felicity smirked, shifting her body to be sitting on his desk directly in front of him, “I’m not going to sit on your lap because you’re old enough to be my fucking father,” she winked as she toed off one of her shoes and placed her foot on his chair between his legs.

“But we both know you’re not my father, because my mother’s vagina had expensive taste,” she crawled her toes against his crotch.

“So you give me the information I want because we’re friends and because you spent years trying to fuck my mother and I’ll even let you watch my ass as I leave, cool?” she winked, digging her toes against the fabric of his pants causing his face to twitch at the sensation.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, adjusting his body slyly under the pressure of her foot.

Felicity pulled out the photo of Laurel that Oliver had given her earlier.  
“Do you know her?” she asked with pouted lips, swirling the chewing gum around her mouth  
“Yea sure, she started here a few months back, Laurel something,” he bobbed his head around the answer.  
“Is she working tonight?” she let her toes straighten, releasing the pressure against his crotch.  
He shrugged coyly.  
She bent her toes in again, puckering the fabric around it and making Maurice gasp through smiling lips.

Oliver bit the inside of his lip and clenched his fist in his jacket. He was barely holding himself back and that rotund ball of sleaze behind the desk seemed to take delight in watching him twitch.

_…whatever I do, it’s not real…_

“She’s not,” Maurice grinned, blinking his eyes back to Felicity.  
“I need to know where she lives, can you give me that?” Felicity leaned in, her lips softly parted as he foot stroked against his thigh.  
“Why do you need that?”

Felicity sat upright. With an infuriated sigh she pushed the desk chair backwards with her foot.  
“She stole my coffee maker, I want it back. What the fuck does it matter to you?” she shrugged nonchalantly.  
“But if you’re not going to help me I’ll just leave,” she pouted, slipping her shoe back on.

She stood up and made her way back around the desk. Oliver was itching to punch that smirk off Maurice’s face as he starred unashamedly at Felicity’s rear end.

“Fine, fine, I’ll make you a deal,” he stood up from the chair, catching her arm in his hand.  
Felicity rolled her eyes as she twisted her head over her shoulder.  
“Alright I’m listening,” she shrugged, pushing the gum between her lips with her tongue.

“I have a private party going on downstairs in one of the rooms, you make me four hundred dollars in two songs, I give you her home address and her fucking social security number of you want it. Let’s see if you can put that sweet ass of yours to use,”

Felicity could feel Oliver’s eyes boring a hole in Maurice’s forehead.

“I want her address and I don’t want her to know I’m asking. We cool?” she popped a small bubble between her lips.  
“Whatever you want,” he smiled, splaying his hands open to her before putting one forward to shake, “deal?”  
“Yea okay, deal,” Felicity replied, taking his clammy hand into her own.

* * *

  
Oliver looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel when they stepped from the office. His mouth opened to speak, but before he could say anything Felicity spoke up.  
“I forgot to ask him something, I’ll be right back,” she muttered, slipping back into Maurice’s office alone and closing the door behind her.

“Changed your mind?” Maurice laughed, setting down the fresh scotch he’d just poured.  
“Five hundred in one song and you get me a ride to the Mexican border first thing tomorrow morning, deal?”  
“Guess you don’t just _look_ like your mother, you act like her too.”  
“Deal?”  
“And the muscle out there?” he nodded towards the door.  
“Just me, he’s not involved,” she replied briskly.  
“Alright, when you turn up tomorrow I’ll have a car waiting to take you wherever you want to go.”  
“And I keep whatever I make above the five hundred.”  
“Balls in a vice Felicity.”  
“Deal?”  
He nodded his acceptance before she left the office once again.

* * *

  
Oliver was pacing when she walked out, his fists were rolling over each other and his face was contorted into about six different emotions. He stopped pacing when he saw her and led her by the hand to a wall away from any listening ears.

“You shouldn’t do this, you don’t need to do this because these people ask it of you. You’re better than this Felicity, you don’t deserve to be treated like a piece of meat,” he stammered through his words one hand cupping her face the other holding her hand, his thumb stroking her wrist.  
“You’re better than all of this,” he sighed.

Felicity sighed contently into his hand, her eyes fluttering up to his.  
“I’m not doing this because they asked me to, I’m doing it because you _didn’t_ ask me to,” she spoke, her softly peached lips smiling up at him.

“Do you know how amazing it makes me feel to know that even when me doing this will give you the one thing you desperately want, you still wouldn’t ask me to do it? You, Oliver Queen are the only person in my life right now that isn’t asking something from me to gain something for yourself,” her eyes were dotted with tears, smiling genuinely through each word she spoke.

“That’s why I’m going to do it, that’s why I want to do it. You are one of the best people I’ve ever had the joy of knowing. You showed me how good a person can be,” she touched her hand to his face, eager to feel the warmth of his skin.

Oliver was consumed with reasons why he didn’t want her to do this, but he could tell her mind was made up. Still, the reasons bounced around his head as he searched for something, maybe she just might listen to…. So consumed with his own thoughts he didn’t hear the nuances in her words – she was speaking in past tense.  
_…for in the morning, I’ll be gone…._

 

* * *

 

Felicity combed her fingers through her hair as she adjusted the costume she had borrowed from one of the girls out back.

The red and black tartan skirt barely covered her ass and the pull-apart skin tight shirt left little to the imagination. She slid up the black satin and lace garter and took a deep, laboured breath as she stood in front of the black lacquered door with the ‘Private’ sign written in gold script.

Oliver could feel himself walking a strange tightrope between feeling incredibly turned on by her and in equal measure jealous that another man – or more accurately, other men – might have the same thoughts he was having.

“Stay in the shadows at the back, one song,” she smiled, kissing his cheek sweetly.  
“I thought you had two songs?” Oliver remarked, a fingertip running a path down her silken arm.  
“Oliver,” she smirked “ye of little faith, I can do it in one. You never got a chance to see me in action, I’m really very good,” she winked, pulling her lip inward at the corner.

She reached for the door. She could do this, not a problem.  
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Oliver questioned, a part of him hoping she would say no.  
“Whatever I do in there, just know I’m thinking of you when I’m doing it, okay?” she whispered into his ear as she opened the door and stepped inside, 9 inch platforms and all.

Oliver debated pulling her right back out of the door again as she was met with a drunken hail of vulgar comments and leering eyes.

He watched from the shadows where she had told him to stay as she shrugged off the words and side stepped any overly eager hands as she step up onto the slightly mirrored stage sandwiched between two rows of high-backed red velvet chairs and benches.

 _Love is like a bomb baby c'mon get it on_  
_Livin' like a lover with a radar phone_  
_Lookin' like a tramp, like a video vamp_  
_Demolition woman, can I be your man? (Your man)_

Oliver couldn’t take his eyes off her as she moved with effortless grace and toying sexuality. Her hands delicately feathered around the first pole, using it to twist her arm around and slide down her back. The flashing lights reflected across the surfaces around the room, catching the tongue rolled over her lips as her free hand slipped down the waistband of her skirt, garnering a loud catcall from the scattering of men that Oliver, frankly, wanted to punch out.

 _Pour some sugar on me_  
_Ooh in the name of love_  
_Pour some sugar on me_  
_C'mon fire me up_

The skirt came off in one swift movement, followed by a head flick of soft blond curls, her hands trailing up her leg as her back arched. Oliver pushed himself further into the wall, training his eyes on her face alone, in case any flickering of fear plagued it. He had decided that the instant he saw any regret or fear in her eyes he would carry her right out of this club also and find another way to get the information he needed.

She caught his eyes and in that moment he could tell she had meant what she said. What everyone else in the room was watching, was a show that she was putting on for him alone.

He felt his body relax as his eyes stayed trained on her, mesmerised by the swing of her hips and the way her hands touched her body, toying with the pull-away buttons on the white shirt.

She moved like she was a mixture of a ballet dancer and a gymnast. He couldn’t help his eyes falling down the arch of her back and resting at the curve of her ass, a smile peeking across his face as he remembered the time she toyed with him on the back seat of his car, seeing how far she could push him in those tiny black lace panties before he had leapt into the car and thrown his jacket around her.

It had felt like months ago, although it had been mere days. Every moment he had spent with made him eager to spend a million more moments with the girl who had found his smile again.

 

* * *

“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to work the rest of the night, you’d make a killing,” Maurice laughed, flapping through the money she had brought him, $754.00 in one song.  
“Piss off Maurice,” Felicity laughed, her palm open for the information she had earned.

He placed a piece of paper in her hand along with $254.00.  
“You earned it,” he nodded.  
“Just keep this to yourself Maurice, I wouldn’t want to have to explain this to daddy. He would be less than impressed,” Felicity smirked, folding both the money and the address into her pocket.  
“Don’t worry, she’ll never know you’re after the coffee maker.”

Felicity turned and began to leave the room, Oliver a step ahead of her.  
“See you tomorrow,” Maurice called out after her.

“What does he mean?” Oliver asked as they made their way back down the opulent stairway.  
“Bastard is just full of wishful thinking,” Felicity laughed, swallowing down the guilt behind the deal she had made earlier.

“So can we go now?” Oliver sighed, eager to get rid of the image of a room full of drunken, rich and handsy businessmen pawing at a girl who was so much more than sex to him.  
“Not until you critique my little performance, you haven’t said a thing,” Felicity smiled, perking her body up on her toes as she wrapped her arms over his shoulders.  
“I’d rather not,” Oliver sighed, it had been both pleasurable and enraging to see her like that and to know he wasn’t the only one seeing it.

“Come on grumpy old man. At least tell me you like my ass,” she winked, pouting her lips soulfully.  
Oliver’s hands smoothed down her back, dipping over the curve of her ass and lingering there.  
“You know how I feel about that,” he sighed hooking his thumbs under the waistband of her jeans.  
“Say it,” she urged playfully.  
“Felicity, you have a fantastic ass,” he whispered into her ear and he smiled against her cheek.  
“Fuck Oliver, you’re such a perve,” she laughed slapping his arm.

* * *

  
“So this is the address, but it’s hard to tell whether that’s her moving around inside,” Oliver sighed, looking through the binoculars as they stood in an alleyway across from the apartment building where Laurel was apparently living.

Oliver had parked the car a block over, mindful that his classic Ford Mustang would probably stick out around this neighbourhood and be one Laurel would be familiar with if she saw it.

“Give me your phone,” Felicity said as she pulled the black beanie low on her head and opened palm out towards Oliver  
Oliver did so dutifully before he questioned “why?”  
“I’m going to see if our information is good. You need to know that right?”  
Oliver nodded in answer to her question.  
“So she doesn’t know me, I can find out if we have the right place.”

Before he could argue with her she had run across the darkened street and into the building.

* * *

  
Felicity kept Oliver’s phone low in her hand as she knocked on the door of Apartment 4B. She heard a child’s voice inside and a clattering of dishes before she heard the jangle of the door chain and the door cracked open.

“Yea?” a female voice asked, half a face eyeing Felicity up and down.  
“I live across the street and my stupid fucking cat escaped again, anyway long story short, he’s out on your fire escape, you mind if I go get him?”

The woman sighed and the door flew further open and Felicity was met with the steeled expression of a tall and leggy brunette.  
“There is no cat on my fire escape,” she muttered, a thick layer of annoyance in her tone.  
“I just want to take a look please, I love that dumb cat,” Felicity shrugged, the woman was definitely Laurel. Her hair was lighter than the photo Oliver had and it looked like she had had some work done on her chin – but it was the same woman.  
“A cat momma, I want a cat” a little voice peeped up from around the corner of a room as she ran up behind Laurel’s legs.

Felicity had to stop her mouth from gaping, she was a tiny little spitting image of Oliver, especially the sparkle of her crystal blue eyes.

With the phone still down by her side she slyly pushed the centre button and secretly snapped a littering of photos, hoping that at least one of them would be usable.

“Get the fuck back into your room,” Laurel hissed at the small blond girl whose face dropped into a frown  
“Why the fuck are you still here? I don’t have your fucking cat, okay?”

The door slammed in Felicity’s face sending a jolted gasp from her lips. All she could think about was how on earth Oliver had been married to that woman.

* * *

  
Oliver’s fingers traced around the small picture captured on the screen of his phone as he sat on the floor of the hotel room. He hadn’t been able to look away from it since Felicity had handed it to him in the alleyway.

He had emailed the address and the photos to Dig to file with the Court as soon as the doors opened tomorrow morning. For the first time in an excessively long time he really felt he might get to hold his daughter again soon.

“And she looked okay? She looked well?” he asked again.  
Felicity hadn’t told him of the exchange that took place, fearing – rightly – that if she did he would jeopardise his position by forcing his way into that apartment.  
“She looked okay, I guess. I’m sorry, it was only a moment,” she sighed, smiling softly as she sat beside him, their backs propped up against smooth white block couch.

“Don’t be sorry, you gave me something I never thought I’d have again. You gave me a chance to get her back, she was lost, but you helped me fine her,” he exclaimed through happy tears, cupping Felicity’s face in his hand.

“We should celebrate,” she smiled brightly, nudging her nose against him “there are some areas of this room we haven’t christened.”

Oliver hummed his approval at the thought of it. Truth was he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since she stepped out of the dressing room at the club in that tiny tartan number. But regardless of how strong his red-bloodied desire to make insanely tantric love to her was, another part of him wanted more – he wanted to know the curves of her heart and the thoughts behind her eyes. He wanted to know her in ways that were so much more than physical.

“For now,” he breathed against her cheek, his lips skating gently across it, “I want to know what’s in here,” he finished, tapping his finger to her forehead.  
“And what is it you would like to know Mr Queen?” she chuckled lightly, sliding her legs over his outstretched one, her body turning at a right angle to his.

“Where does a debutant princess like you learn to dance like that?” he laughed, running a hand down his bristled jawline.  
“I think liquor is in order if you’re going to ask me deep and meaningful questions like that,” she mocked, standing up and smoothing down the hem of the little white cut-off shorts she had changed into once they were home.

“Felicity, once again, the drinking age is 21 in this state,” he called as she disappeared into the kitchen.

She reappeared moments later with a bottle of champagne and two long stemmed glasses, tucked under the billowing sweatshirt she had borrowed from Oliver, deciding it was much more comfortable than any of the clothes she had.

He had gladly given it to her. There was something both sexual and endearing about watching her pad around the room in his clothes.

Felicity, for her part, was merely trying to savour the last remaining hours of something she was desperate to hold on to, but knew was out of her reach. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about the sun coming up. She would live in this moment – in this night – for as long as she could.

“The minibar in this place is like a fully stocked liquor store,” she smiled, sitting on the floor between his legs, her own legs tenting on either side of his.  
“I don’t need two glasses,” he smirked, picking one up into his hands.  
“You’re going to argue drinking age with me, after the things you’ve done with me,” she smiled flirtatiously as she took the glass from his hands and handed him the perfectly chilled champagne.

“I suppose you make a valid point,” he replied, peppering her likes with a dozen tiny kisses.

He unwrapped the neck of the bottle and thumbed out the cork, a loud ‘pop’ echoing through the spacious room. He poured two glasses and held his in the air.  
“What are we toasting to?” she asked with a rouged pout.  
“Chances,” he replied simply, his lidded eyes staring clearly through hers.  
Shyly she blinked away but nodded at his gesture, clinking her own glass to his.  
_There she was. The real Felicity and she was beautiful._

* * *

  
“I just want to be able to give Maddie everything she could want, everything she could need, you know?” Oliver sighed, his champagne glass now almost empty.  
“If she’s with you, then she’ll have everything she needs,” Felicity smiled, her upper body now rested on a pile of pillows Oliver had built behind her, her legs still rested over the top of his.

“I can’t give her a pony, like you probably had,” he mocked kindly, running his hand up her smooth leg.

She laughed into her almost empty glass as she held up her spread fingers, signalling the number 5.  
“No shit, you had five ponies?” Oliver gaped.  
Felicity covered her face with her hand, her cheeks turning a bright shade of flushed pink.  
“Yes,” she laughed, unable to look at him.  
“What the hell does one little girl need with five ponies?” his hands wrapped around her waist, pulling her upwards so her face met with his.

“I don’t know,” she laughed, still hiding her embarrassment behind her hand.  
“Where are these ponies now?” he continued, sipping down the rest of his glass.  
“I have no idea,” she shrugged, also finishing her glass.  
“Five ponies,” he exhaled, shaking his head in disbelief as he filled their respective glasses back up.

“Didn’t you ever collect something?” Felicity smiled over the rim of her glass.  
“Wrestling figurines, not ponies,” he mocked, his hand moving back to her legs where his thumb instinctive ran in circles.  
“Next topic,” she sighed, flopping her head back onto the wall of pillows, her hair cascading down the side of it  
“I’m still waiting on seeing you pirouette with a book on your head.”

She twitched her eyebrows upward as she stood abruptly and ran to the phone beside the room door.

When Oliver joined her moments later she was already talking to someone.  
“Any book, it honestly doesn’t matter, it just needs to be a hard covered one.”  
“Sure, that will do.”  
“Thank you.”  
She hung up the phone with a broadening smile on her face.

“You can order room service books in this place?” Oliver asked rhetorically, his head shaking at the mere thought of it.  
“We have our own personal butler, you can order anything darh..ling,” Felicity shrugged, with the pursed lips of an acted out snob.

Mere minutes later Felicity was taking the book from the slightly confused butler at the room door and Oliver had taken up his position on the floor, eagerly doing a drumroll on the polished wooden floor.

“Okay, it has been a while, but here goes,” she smiled after kicking back the rug in the middle of the room  
She placed the hardcopy version of _Wuthering Heights_ on her head, her neck straight and her arms moving slowly down to her sides.

Oliver watched with absolute enjoyment as Felicity did three full turns on her tippy-toe, the book barely moving atop her head. On the fourth turn she lost her balance and stumbled onto the floor, the book making a thud as it toppled down beside her.

“That is the best thing I have seen in a long time, would you teach Madeline that?” he asked with a smile, before he realised the gravity of what he had just said.

Given how she had reacted to his earlier declaration of love for her, he immediately regretted saying it, in case it garnered the same reaction.

Felicity did hear it and with her head turned away she winched at his words, not because she didn’t believe that he meant the words he was saying, but because she knew she couldn’t answer that truthfully.

“You know I’ve never eaten a hotdog,” she blurted out, scrambling to change the subject.  
“Are you kidding me?” Oliver quipped, knocking back a drink of champagne.  
“Nope,” Felicity responded, taking up her previous spot between his legs.  
“How do you get to almost 20 years old and have never eaten a hotdog?”  
“You do understand the environment I grew up in right? My personal chef didn’t exactly make hotdogs, and I don’t know,” she shrugged, “I’ve just never had one.”

“You went to sports games though right?”  
She took a drawn out sip as she nodded, “Sure.”  
“So what did you eat there?”  
She smiled under closed lips, her head gently shaking – she didn’t want to tell him.

“Shit you ate caviar didn’t you? You ate caviar at a baseball game,” he cocked his head back against the seat of the couch letting out a roar of laughter.  
“Not exactly, I don’t particularly like caviar, but yes, they had it in the box.”  
“Will wonders never cease. Sports games are not the place to eat caviar. Not that I would know, I’ve never been in any place where it seems appropriate to eat caviar.”  
“So you’ve never eaten caviar?” she smiled playfully, scooching her body closer to him, as her arms wrapped around his waist, feathering under his black cotton singlet.

“No princess, I have not,” he smiled, taking the opportunity of her close proximity to place a littering of delicate kisses atop the warmed pulse point on her neck.  
“So let’s order hot dogs and caviar, live dangerously,” she hummed, crooking her neck towards his warm dewy breath.

* * *

  
It was another 20 minutes before the personal butler showed up again, still slightly perplexed at the requests that had been made of him in the last half hour. Felicity took the two trays from him with a sweet thank you and took them to Oliver who was waiting in the same spot propped up against the couch.

“Hotdogs first,” he declared, finishing off the second glass of champagne.  
“Okay,” Felicity smiled, sitting once again between his legs, her legs crossed over each other, just her knees knocking up against his legs.

She held the hotdog pensively in her hands as Oliver bit down on his own and then gestured her to do the same.

She took a bite, staring at him with bemused eyes. She screwed up her nose as she chewed the mouthful.  
“What is this?” she laughed, cupping her hand to her mouth as she continued to chew.  
“It’s a hotdog,” Oliver grinned in reply, almost half way through his.  
“I mean, what meat is this? What animal does this come from?” she continued, her face contorting at the weird processed texture of what tasted like cardboard wrapped in bread.

“Fucked if I know,” Oliver laughed, using the phrase she had said days before.  
“I don’t like this at all,” she cringed placing her uneaten half back on the tray as she swallowed down the chewed mouthful.

“So now it’s my turn?” Oliver asked, poking his finger into the white dish of slimely little balls.  
“Uh-huh, but it’s all about presentation,” Felicity smiled taking the little bowl from his hands.

She placed it on the floor just outside their legs and pulled back the collar of his oversized sweatshirt, revealing her smooth collarbone. She skated her tongue across her bottom lip before snaring it between her teeth as she scooped up a three small eggs and gently placed them in the dip of her collarbone.

She blinked back at him, her lids softly lowered and her lips drawn up at the corner into a seductive smile.  
“Your first taste awaits Oliver,” she breathed out the words between sultry lips.

Oliver instinctively swiped his tongue across his bottom lip, edging his body closer to hers. His legs folded over behind her as his hands traversed her inner thighs, his thumbs ducking under the purposefully jagged hem.

His lips hovered just above her collarbone as his nose nestled against her neck, inhaling her skin with the smallest of breaths.

His tongue delicately touched her skin first, the deliciously light fluttering of it against her causing her eyes to blink heavily as the softest of sighs dripped from her lips.

Oliver folded his bottom lip atop the round of her prominent and smooth bone, anchoring his mouth to allow his top lip to land just above the caviar. Felicity hummed warmly into air as Oliver swept his tongue across her silk skin, lapping up the caviar as his lips pushed deeper into the dip of her body.

His gently squeezed his hands into her legs, desperate to feel every part of him touching against her. Oliver dragged his lips over her collarbone, his tongue lapping in any remnants left behind, as his lips rounded back over her bone, his teeth lightly nipped at her skin, making her jitter just a fraction next to him.

“The caviar was disgusting,” he spoke against her neck, his lips writing out each word against her skin, “but the presentation was perfect.”

* * *

  
**5:07am.**  
Felicity stared at the red numbers screaming at her from the bedside table.

She was dressed and her packed bag sat on the floor by her feet.  
She had been sat there for 7 minutes so far.  
She needed to leave, but she couldn’t make her legs carry her weight, she couldn’t make her hand pick up the bag at her feet and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Oliver – naked and face down on the bed, making an incessantly cute half snore every third breath he took.

She felt the trickle of soft tears down the tracks of her cheeks, desperate for a third option where he came with her, where she could bare her soul and he could make her safe in his arms. But she couldn’t – she wouldn’t – ask that of him, Oliver had too much to leave behind for a broken and scarred ghost.

Felicity touched her long and trembling fingers to her lips, searching for the feeling of his soft lips lingering over hers. Her lips tremored at the recount of the moments he had cast his lips onto her that very night, sweeping her into them like it was his lifeline, like it was all he needed, completely unashamed of his longing. It was the most honest thing she had ever seen.

Felicity smoothed her palm atop her clothes down between her breasts, wrapping it into a fist as it met her navel, desperate to recreate and memorise the way he had touched her like no man ever had. He had touched her with respect and with love, the two things she had never truly known.

Silent tears burned their bitter path down her face.  
**5:13**  
She needed to go.

She closed her eyes, searching for his voice in her ears, just to hear him tell her the words she had rejected.  
_I think I’m falling in love with you_

The first time she heard an incarnation of those words they had been a vile and cruel lie. She felt the memory welling up inside her like a bitter swell of everything she despised, everything she ran from.  
_It’s not wrong if we love each other. I love you, you’re special Felicity_  
The words made her retch.

Oliver’s words held no malice, no contentious reasoning behind them, he had said them as honestly as he knew how and Felicity was terrified she couldn’t really offer him the same in return.

How does someone who is barely existing behind her own shadow give the type of love he deserved?

Felicity took the pictures from atop her bag and gently thumbed through them. Each one a memory of a moment where she felt alive. She stopped at the one Oliver had taken of her.  
_Finding beauty_  
His words sparked a fresh stream of tears.

She took a pen and wrote the simplest of messages on the back.

 **5:26**  
It was time to go.

She breathed and stood up, a little unsteady on her feet and she walked the few feet to the bed and placed the photos on the pillow, spilling a few lost tears into the fabric as they fell from her eyes.

“Goodbye Oliver,” she whispered backing away from the bed.  
“I’m so sorry,” the words were barely above a breath as she turned around in the doorframe, shifting the bag on her shoulder.

She stole one last look at him before she hurried down the stairs and out the door, leaving behind one simple message to him written on the back of a polaroid picture:

 _Live a happy life_  
_Enjoy each moment_  
_Find the love that doesn’t hurt_  
_~Felicity_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has to be said I may have purposefully endeavoured to make at least one person legitimately cry..... please tell me if that was you.
> 
> I appreciate this was an extra long roller coaster....xoxo
> 
> Twitter @someonesaidcake


	12. Las Vegas Found

**Before you start, please be aware of the following:**  
**This chapter will deal with a very real, difficult and ‘adult’ theme.**  
**I have endeavoured to treat this with the utmost dignity, while not sugar coating the gravity of it. It has not been done lightly or conversely for mere shock value. I do hope that this is conveyed with respect.**

 **While I don’t feel this is graphic, it is honest so please use your discretion.**  
**Thank you.**

  
The piercing crescendo of the phone next to Oliver rudely jolted him awake. He slammed his hand blindly against the smooth surface of the white bedside his face still buried in the soft luxury of the pillow that he was most certain was worth more than his bed at home.

His hand finally connected with his phone and between squinted eyes his answered it.  
“Yeah?” he croaked, muffled by the pillow.  
“Oliver, you there man?” it was Diggle.  
“Yeah, what’s up,” he propped himself halfway up, his back to the other side of the bed.  
“Lyla is filing the papers this morning, she’s going to call in a few favours and see if it can be slipped to the top of the pile, no promises, but she said as your lawyer and friend to hurry up and get your ass home. You got a 16 hour drive, load the girl in the car and get moving.”

Oliver’s barely awake and slightly hungover brain was trying to process what John was saying to him.  
“How long does Lyla think it’ll take for it to be processed?” he slipped his legs out from the bed and planted them on the polished floor.  
“Three or four days, but you need to be in the state as quickly as you can.”

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he glanced over to the clock. – 8:04am.  
“Yea, right, we’ll be on the road in under an hour,” Oliver yawned.  
“We’ll let you know if Lyla hears anything.”  
“Thanks, thank you. Tell Lyla I appreciate everything she’s done.”  
“Alright man, drive safe.”

The conversation ended and Oliver slipped his phone back onto the bedside table. It was only then he realised he had not felt Felicity stir next to him or even felt her body move against the mattress.

A sudden and looming sense of trepidation fell over the now eerily silent room. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder, a part of him already knew what he would find – empty space. He already knew, she had left.

He rolled his head over his shoulder and instantly his eyes were drawn to the photos left on the pillow. He felt the hitch in his stomach and the constrict around his throat as he ran a fingertip over the top of them. His lips pulled inwards and his brow creased in an attempt to hold back his equally tempered desire to bury his face in his hands and punch the wall.

Oliver turned over the first polaroid and read her note in silence.

 _Live a happy life_  
_Enjoy each moment_  
_Find the love that doesn’t hurt_  
_~Felicity_

He couldn’t hold back the swell a moment longer, his hands to his eyes he wept silent, breathless tears that mirrored the pain etched deep in the lines of his face.

Oliver sat like that for what he felt was seconds, but when he looked up again the clock blinked 8:44am. He had to leave. He had finally found Madeline, his daughter, his true north, he needed to get home, to be there for her.

But....  
He couldn’t just walk away from Felicity, he couldn’t just accept that the brief but encompassing , powerful even, moments they had spent together were all part of an elaborate masquerade and this note had been her final encore.

No....  
He had stared into her eyes, he had held her trembling body and he had kissed the truth from her lips. She didn’t wear a mask for him. She was naked and vulnerable to him and he had held her like that. She had run for fear, and fear alone and if there was a chance he could find her, he had to take it.

He threw on the first clothes he could find. He didn’t know how long she had been gone or even where he would start to look for her. He had no plan and very little time to spare, but he had to try.... he had to. He couldn’t just walk away.

Stumbling to the door with only one shoe on, fumbling to put the other on, he used an elbow to open the room door into the hallway. He took two haphazard steps away from the door before he saw it.... before he saw her.

Felicity blinked up from her seat on the floor, the spot she had slid down into in a flood of tears the moment she shut the room door. The same spot she had stayed in ever since, willing herself to move but lacking the commitment to and now he was standing in front of her with an inside out shirt and only one shoe on. A river of tears fell from her eyes in that moment, she was bent and vulnerable and he was there.  
“I should have gone, I should have,” she sniffed, her head falling to her tented knees.  
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he breathed, dropping the shoe in his hands.  
“Oliver,” she looked up with drenched eyes, “I’m scared,” she whispered.  
“Felicity, let me help you, let me in,” he closed the gap between them in one step and crouched down beside her

Felicity felt the surge from the pit of her stomach.  
_He was Oliver, she could trust Oliver_  
She was so tired of this secret, a secret that bore into her like battery acid. She couldn’t keep it inside any longer. She needed to jump and she needed him to catch her.

“I was only 15, just a child, the first time he kissed me,” she stared at a spot on the carpet beneath her  
“When who kissed you Felicity?” Oliver spoke softly, his eyes trained on her.  
She looked up at him, readying herself to jump, praying he would catch her.  
_Oliver, she could trust Oliver_  
“Thomas, my step brother,” she breathed.  
She jumped.

Oliver swallowed the lump in his throat.  
_There it was. There was her truth._  
“Come inside,” he gently urged, his arms instinctively wrapping around her quaking shoulders.  
He caught her.

Felicity sat on the dining chair, her heels tucked into her, her knees against her chest and her arms coiled around her legs. The tears ran slowed tracks down her cheeks as she blinked at Oliver sitting opposite, close enough that his palms touched her chair, bridging the gap between them without physically touching her.

“I’m here to listen Felicity, whatever you need, I’m here.”  
She took a shallow and stunted breath.  
“I need you to write it down, please,” she said between broken breaths.  
“So if anything happens to me, you’ll know what to do with it,” she finished, swiping away the tears.  
“Nothing is going to happen-,“ Oliver started.  
“Please,” she pleaded, “Just write it down.”  
Oliver nodded as he stood and retrieved a pen and pad from his satchel. He returned to his chair, placed the pad open and held the pen tightly in his hands, his body turned so at any moment she could look up and see his face.

“Our parents weren’t married yet, but she had moved into the estate a couple of months beforehand. Thomas was away at college, he had visited a few times with his mother, but this was the first time he had spent the weekend. I had always wanted siblings so I was excited about having a older brother, he was nice to me, we weren’t close, but he was nice enough,” she paused, folding her lips over the memory that was so vivid in her mind.

She watched Oliver writing it down, his movement clear and concise. With each word she spoke a sense of ease coming with it.  
_She could trust Oliver._

He looked up, a brief but instantly calming smile on his face.  
“It was a Saturday night, some weekend in July, I don’t remember when,” she squinted for a moment, rubbing a hand nervously down her arm.  
“I was walking the halls, I don’t remember why, but I remember just thinking about a math assignment due the next week,” she blinked up, spilling tears, “I think he’d been drinking, I smelt him before I saw him stumble around the corner. He dropped his keys at my feet, back then I thought it was a careless mistake, looking back,” she paused, her eyes drawn down, thinking, “I think he took a calculated risk.”

She hugged her legs tighter, giving her body the balance to carry on.  
“When he was coming back up, he put his hand on my leg,” she mirrored her words with actions, skating her palm on the outside of her upper thigh, “I just froze, a boy hadn’t touched me like that before, I didn’t know what to do,” she shrugged softly, recoiling her hand.

Oliver looked up, he wanted to hold her in his arms to take this pain away from her, but he knew the best thing for her was for him to do just as she asked, so he wrote. Word after painful word, he wrote.

Her hand was trembling as she put it to her lips, holding her bottom lip pinched between fingers.  
“I was only 15, and he, he took my first kiss from me. Pushed up against a wall in a dim empty hallway he took it and I didn’t,” she squeezed out tears, “I couldn’t stop him.”

She recoiled at the tasted memory that filled her mouth.  
“It was vile, forced and he tasted like beer and cigarettes. He put his hands on me, grabbing at me. He was so much stronger than me and my feet wouldn't move, I just started crying, sobbing at the feeling of his tongue inside my mouth.”

She dropped her head onto her knees, folding her arms over her head, her fingernails scraping at the base on her neck, she didn’t want these memories anymore, she wanted them gone, she wanted to forget them. But they were scars she wore deeply now and however painful the recall was, she needed this, she needed to speak it to someone who wouldn’t lock it behind a white door and an iron fence.

Oliver.  
Her chance.

“He pulled away, and for a split moment it was like he was confused, surprised. I don’t know if it was because he was expecting me to be someone else, or whether he expected me to enjoy it,” she combed her fingers through her loose tresses, “either way, he just backed away and left me there, crying in the hall.”

She swiped a few stray tears away, willing herself the strength to continue.  
“He apologised the next day, begged me not to say anything, he had been drunk, didn’t know what he was doing,” she rolled over the words, remembering the way she had foolishly believed them, she had been naïve, “I believed him, I didn’t really know any better.”

She took a breath.  
“Weeks later I was in the movie room watching the new Harry Potter movie,” she smiled a frail smile, despite everything she still loved those movies, “he asked if he could watch it with me,” she raised one shoulder, rolling it into her body, “I wish I could change my answer.”

“He sat with me for a while, and don’t even know how it started, but he wanted to know if I had a boyfriend,” Felicity let one foot fall down on the floor, adjusting her weight on the chair, “I remember laughing at the idea, I wasn’t exactly the type of girl that boys looked at,” she pulled her hair over her shoulder, thumbing through it.

Oliver watched her intently, his eyes never straying far from her own, now blotchy with dried tears.

“I had glasses and my hair was always pulled back, I was nothing special,” she sighed, “he said that high school boys didn’t know what they were missing, that I had beautiful lips, beautiful soft lips,” her fingers trembled into a fist around the neck on her t-shirt.

“For months he groomed me, I know that now,” she blinked up at Oliver, his hand busy transcribing each word she said, “back then, my father barely noticed me and I hadn’t seen my mother in years. I was just a naïve girl who someone paid attention to.”

“I hate myself for that, for that desperate need I had just to be noticed, if I didn’t, he wouldn’t,” her body shook under the weight of the words she spoke, the anger she had misplaced against herself had always taken a heavy toll of _what ifs_ on her soul for years.

Oliver cracked watching her crumble under the blame she marred herself with.  
“Felicity, you were a child, you did nothing wrong,” his finger gently lifted her cheek, she needed to see his eyes, “You did nothing wrong.”

She nodded slowly. No one had ever told her that.

“It went on for months, he would tell me he loved me, he would tell me I was special,” she sunk her body into a small ball, tightly shrinking her presence.  
Oliver closed his eyes as the words slipped quietly from her mouth. He saw her face from yesterday, heard the warning she had given him  
_Don’t call me special....don’t tell me you love me_

If he had only known.

“He sent me gifts, wrote me letters, made me feel,” she swiped tears from her cheeks, her foot nervously stroking the leg of the chair, her lips pursed and her head dropped to one shoulder, “he made me feel special.”  
“Whenever he came home he would tell me about other girls, college girls and the things they offered him, but that he only loved me, but I needed to show him I loved him too,” she folded her lips as they quivered over the words, a stray tear running the crease of her nose.

“I let him kiss me,” her voice grew tiny, scared, “I let him touch me, but every time he did I would cry afterwards, it always felt so wrong, I never wanted it, I just,” she exhaled through parted lips, “I just let it happen.”

She stood up abruptly, making Oliver’s eyes jump up.  
“Do you need a break?” he asked finishing the last word.  
“No,” she replied simply, swallowing back her wavering and frayed nerves.

She jumped.  
He caught her.  
This wasn’t done, not yet.

“After our parents got married, December 2004, I said no more, I didn’t want his hands on me anymore, I don’t know what triggered me, but I didn’t want it, I told him that it had to stop, that it had to be finished, it was wrong. ‘It’s not wrong if you love each other’ he said, but I said no,” she paced the circuit of the table where Oliver sat, her palms snuggling tucked under her arms, closing her body inward.

“I never saw his hand coming but he caught me on the side of my face,” a light finger touched her right cheek, remembering the shock of it more than the physical pain of it.  
“He pushed me onto the bed and tore my t-shirt. I wanted to scream, but I had no words, no voice. He had his hands all on me, grabbing at me, holding me down,” she stopped, the memory too real, she felt her knees shake, the room spin, she leaned against a wall, holding herself upright as she took three laboured breaths and latched her eyes on to Oliver.

_She could trust Oliver._

Her back still against the wall, she wiped away tears and continued.  
“He put one hand over my mouth, pushing me so hard into the pillow, I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t breath,” she choked her words, a palm at her neck, the feeling of it so intense even all these years later.

“He put his other hand down my pants,” she slumped her shoulders forward, “I was 15,” she wept, “and he forced his fingers inside me, on my bed, in my bedroom. I was only 15 and I couldn’t stop him.”

She slumped to the floor, her legs giving way as fresh tears burning across her face. Oliver rushed beside her, taking her into his arms, letting her sob into his shoulder without a single word.

He caught her.

She pulled back from his shoulder and nodded towards the notebook.  
“Felicity maybe you should take a break,” his concern was genuine.  
“No, if I stop I’m afraid I’ll never have to courage to start again, please Oliver.”

“He used his fingers to take something from me that night. By the time he was finished I was in so much pain on different levels,” her eyes stayed lower, tears cascading down the well worn paths of her face.  
“All Thomas could say was that I had made him do it, look what I had made him do,” she blinked up, desperate to connect with a face she could trust, as if he knew he thoughts, Oliver looked down at her, his own eyes welling with emotion. Felicity had barely been older than his sister when this happened, he couldn’t begin to imagine the toll that would take.

“He made me believe that I had led him on, I had been to blame and that if I told anyone, that no one would believe me. I just wanted him to leave, so I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone, I told him that I was sorry,” her body shook under the weight of the feelings she had buried. For so long she had convinced herself that it had been her fault, that she had not rebuffed him earlier, perhaps even that she had relished the attention. These were all things he had systematically told her and she had wrongly believed.

“I just tried to stay away from him from then on, he went back to college and I tried to just move on, to get over it, I just wanted to pretend it never happened,” she bit into her lip as she spoke, short breaths broke up her words as she tried to keep her strength.

She held her hands against her arms and tightly squeezed her body before she started speaking again.  
“I did alright, people never looked at me different, never noticed the sadness I hid between smiles and top marks at school. I felt it was done, it was over. I was wrong.”

Felicity felt her body recoil and felt the familiar swell inside her. She was trying to stem it, push it back down and hold the desire at bay. She knew if she threw up now she wouldn’t be able to continue and despite her desire to pretend like none of this happened, this was her story – her truth – her dark tunnel to travel down before she had the chance at feeling the sunlight on her face.

“It was my sixteenth birthday, the party was ridiculously over the top. I didn’t know most of the people there and those I did know barely remembered my name. I hated every minute of it, all I had wanted was warm milk in the kitchen with my father, instead I got a car I couldn’t drive and a party full of people that meant nothing to me. I remember dad saying he had to leave, he had a call to make, Rebecca would take me home,” her face grimaced at the mention of her step mother’s name.

“I was so angry with him that I let my guard down. Thomas offered me a drink and I accepted it. I don’t remember much else about the party. It was a bit of a running joke at school that I was drunk, but I don’t know,” she shook her head softly, tucking her knees into her chest.

Oliver watched her body invert into itself, it was like she was trying to make herself smaller than she already was, like she wanted to shrink away into the wall behind her. It was painful to watch, to see her like that, so childlike, so scared. But he also saw more, her saw her courage her determination to get through these memories despite the toll it was taking on her. It took every ounce of restraint he had not to wrap his arms tightly around her and tell her he would take her pain if he could.

“I only remember pieces of memories, they’re my memories, but it’s like I’m seeing them from the outside at parts. I can see myself stumbling into a room I didn’t know. I can see a neon sign where only some of the letters worked, flickering neon lights, they were fuzzy but bright,” she rubbed a hand across her eyes, she could still see it behind her eyelids, like it was burned permanently into her skin there.

“I could smell mothballs, dank mothballs, heavy in the air. Noises were echoing like I was underwater, but patches would come through clear, I heard my name being whispered in my ear, just a few words ‘you want this, look what you’re making me do’ over and over in my ear, hot, sticky breath against my skin. I think I said no, but I don’t know if the words ever past over my lips,” lightly a finger traced a path across her lips and down her neck, stopping just along her collarbone as her eyes shut for a moment, spilling her mind back to those memories.

“I was naked, I don’t know if I did it, or he did, but I remember vividly the seconds I stood, unsteady on my feet, beside a bed with a blue duvet, completely naked and his face, looking at me with eyes that were devoid of kindness but full of something else. The look a man gets when you are nothing more than a means to an end,” she found herself rocking slowly on her tailbone.

It was a face she would not easily forget, a face she had seen many times throughout her life. It was the face she saw right before she removed her soul, before she became a husk. It was a look Oliver had never once given her, even when she offered it so freely in the beginning.

“I felt his hands in me, they were rough. I must have fought him because he held my wrist so tightly above my head that it was sore for days after,” her hands were trembling, her heart hitching every second breath, she was breaking, she could see the sunlight, but she was breaking, she couldn’t continue, she couldn’t reach it.

“Felicity,” Oliver said gently  
She opened her eyes and saw him.  
“You’re safe Felicity, you’re safe here with me, you’re not there in that room, you’re here, safe with me,” he repeated calmly.

He caught her.

She nodded, taking another step towards the sunlight.  
“He raped me that night, his body was so heavy on top of mine, I remember struggling to breathe, the weight of him swarmed me,” she patted a hand to her chest.

“The pain tore through me like he was using a knife, he was so rough, so forced. I remember screaming but he didn’t stop. My voice was weak because I couldn’t breath but I tried to struggle, to scream but he wouldn’t stop. I came in and out of a lucid state, I think my mind was trying to screen me from some of it,” she combed fingers across her scalp, holding them there as her head dropped to her knees.

“It felt like hours before he finished, inside me, just to make sure he had completed his degradation of me I suppose. His weight lifted off me and he wished me a happy birthday, he told me his present to me was making me a woman,” she retched at the words and the callous nature of how he spoke them.

“I was crying, lying in the foetal position feeling like a fire was tearing through me inside when he yanked me upwards and put me in the shower. He told me to clean up,” her lips trembled at the recount of the boiling water she scolded herself with, the pain it caused her and how she stayed there until it ran cold.

“He took me home, told me if I ever told anyone that no one would believe me, he told me the next time would be better, I might enjoy it. He was laughing at me and I just nodded, I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to disappear.”

She stood up, anxious to walk through her feelings.  
“He didn’t touch me again after that, I don’t know whether it was because he had taken what he needed or whether circumstances never allowed for it, he studied abroad and I desperately threw myself into any activity I could. I tried to rebuild myself, so much of me was broken beyond repair, but no one noticed, no one cared,” she scuffed her feet along the floor remembering the quiet times she sat alone, imagining telling her father, her mother – anyone, but she never did, she never could. They would hate her, much like she hated herself.

“I hid myself behind books and baggy clothes, I never wanted to make another man look at me the way I thought I had made Thomas look at me. I got top grades and I successfully made myself invisible. I was surviving. When Thomas came back around my seventeenth birthday, I tried to hide, put as much distance between us, I barricaded my door at night and I wore layers of clothes regardless of the weather. The day of my birthday, I found myself alone in the kitchen and he found me, like he knew.”

She paced a space along the floor, subconsciously counting her steps, five on them from one point to the other. Oliver watched, watched and wrote.

“He pressed himself against me, pushing his erection onto me, sandwiching me between him and the kitchen island. His vile breath was on my neck as he whispered how nice I was looking and how he wanted to give me a birthday present ‘like last year’,” she cringed through the words, her tears replaced with a burning hatred.

“I knew what he meant, but I wasn’t that same scared little girl. I fumbled across the island looking for something, anything to get him away from me. My hand found a knife,” she took a breath remembering how the steel handle had felt in her hands.

“I didn’t even look, I just launched my hand backwards, the feeling of it in my hand as it met with his body was unlike anything else, there was a sound I will never be able to recreate and the sound of his scream was shattering, but,” she paused for a moment, “it was releasing.”

“I never stayed to see where I got him or if he was okay, I just took the car keys and left. I drove the city outskirts, no plan, no direction, just driving. I guess I took a corner too fast and I crashed that stupidly excessive sixteenth birthday present”

“Did you mean to crash it?” Oliver asked, it had been the same question he had asked once before, but now her truth had context and she had nothing to hide from him.  
“I don’t think so,” she shrugged, it was the truth, “I had wanted to escape but there had not been a deliberate choice made to crash, just a forethought before I lost consciousness in the wreck that maybe it would be okay not to survive this.”

She sighed softly, it had been a part of her that she had never told anyone, never admitted to out loud. But here was Oliver, and she just could – and it would be okay.

“I woke up in hospital,” she traced the scar on her wrist, “my father asked me why I had done it, he assured me that Thomas would be fine, I had only gotten his thigh, like I gave a fuck,” she pursed her lips remembering how concerned her father had been with Thomas, “Rebecca stood in the corner of the room, her arms folded and this bitch look on her face, I hate that woman,” she pursed her lips bitterly.

“I just told them. I told them everything, it came out of me like a waterfall, every detail, everything I have told you, I told them, I held nothing back and when I was done, silence, nothing. You told me I was a child then, that I wasn’t to blame. You told me I was safe. They said nothing, they just left the room and I wondered for a moment if I was speaking in tongues.”

She kicked the leg of a chair, sending it skidding backwards.  
“He was my _father_ and I told him _everything_ and he said _nothing_. He didn’t hug me, cry with me, he saw my heart on my sleeve and he said _nothing_. He turned away from me and left the fucking room. He just left. He just fucking left me.”

Oliver stood, unable to restrain himself any longer. Silently her walked towards her and wrapped his arms around her, fully enveloping her small frame.  
“He just left me there, he fucking left me there,” she pound her small fist into his chest and he took it without a word, his arms just holding her.

He would always catch her.

“Within an hour they moved me to a private facility,” she blotted tears against Oliver’s chest, “they had me committed to a psychiatric facility. I opened myself up and they shut me away, to a place with white walls and iron fences, where no one hears you. That’s where they will put me if I go back Oliver,” she was shaking again, her fear a real one.

“Why, why do you think that?” he asked, his hands running over the crown of her head.  
“I spent 12 months in there Oliver, where no one could hear me, no one could talk to me, nothing I said could be used against _him_. Oliver they locked me away to keep his dirty little secret,” she felt safe in his arms as she nestled her body against his.

“When I finally got out of there, I tried to go home, tried to be the daughter I was supposed to be. I went to events, I wore the dresses and the rouge lipstick. I smiled for photos, I dutifully walked around like nothing was wrong, but I was dead inside. I was nothing but a shell and each minute longer I spent there I walked closer to the edge of a cliff. I changed my name and I left that world behind me, and they didn’t give a rat’s ass about it.”

She parted from the embrace, her hand trailing down his strong arm till it rested in his palm.  
“They never cared that I left until that fucker did it again to a freshman, and then the cracks started. Some cop from home showed up on my doorstep in New York. I don’t know where he got my name from, or how he knew my story,” her eyes dropped downward as she slumped into a chair, Oliver taking a seat opposite her, his knees touching hers, his hand still holding on tightly to hers.

“He knew most of it, nothing he could use in Court and he wouldn’t say where he got it from, but he knew and he wanted me to return, to take the stand. He didn’t understand what he was asking me to do. I packed my bags and I skipped town that night, I knew that they would find out, that they would send someone to find me,” she looked across at him, the pain cast in a single slow falling tear, “they sent you.”

“If they get me declared unfit, which they will, they will have guardianship over me, they will put me back there Oliver, to the place where you only get a spoon to eat with and the walls are the only ones that hear you crying. They will put me in there so no one can talk to me, no one can hear me. That’s why I asked you to write it down.”

She swiped away more plaguing tears.  
“I barely survived that place last time, I won’t be able to do it again Oliver, you take that,” she pointed at the notebook, “You do what you need to, what I couldn’t.”

Oliver leaned in, taking her head into his hand, his fingers weaving through the crown of her head. His forehead touched gently against her, their eyes locked tightly together.  
“Felicity, you’re safe, you’re not going back there. I don’t know how yet, but I will protect you. Come home with me, stay with me, I will protect you,” she blinked and he pulled her closer, her eyes flicking back upwards, he needed her to see the conviction permeating in his eyes, “I promise you, I will keep you safe.”

She jumped.  
He caught her.  
She could trust him.  
She could see the sunlight, she could almost feel it on her face.

* * *

  
Nine hours later Oliver was pulling over to a siding off the 78 highway just out of New Princeton, Oregon. His eyes were tired, his muscles tight and his head overwhelmed in thoughts. He needed to rest his eyes before they finished the journey.

Felicity had fallen asleep about an hour ago. Oliver looked across at her with hooded eyes. He didn’t have a plan, didn’t even have a semblance of one, but he meant what he said. He would protect her, he would – he did – love her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this. I was nervous about my relay of it and truly hope I treated it with respect.  
> @someonesaidcake


	13. Starling City

  
“You live by the beach?” Felicity smiled softly as Oliver drove the winding road out along the coast of Starling

They had woken up just after dawn, garnering a few hours rest before travelling the rest of the way through Oregon and on into the outskirts of Starling City. It had been an arduous along 8 hour journey, but it was minutes away from being over.

“Don’t get too excited, she’s a work in progress,” he smiled, pulling alongside the tussock lined driveway beside a weathered white brick and shingled house.  
“Your house is a she?” a brief but honest chuckle followed.

Oliver could tell she was terrified. Her hand hadn’t moved from the armrest the entire last leg of the trip and despite the car now being at a complete standstill, she had made no movement to step out of it. All he wanted to do was make her feel at ease.

“Of course, she requires too much maintenance to be a guy,” he winked, gently placing his hand on her knee, “but she’s more beautiful because of it.”  
She folded her hand onto his, interlinking their fingers.  
“Tell me it’ll be okay, even if it won’t be,” she whispered, her eyes blinking away a single tear.  
“Felicity,” he breathed, his other hand sliding up her cheek, his thumb swiping away another rogue tear, “I promise you, I’ll keep you safe.”

“You must look at me like I’m weak, like I’m broken,” she sighed, the warmth of his hand on her face like a soothing elixir.  
“Quite the opposite, you’ve fought Felicity, you’re still fighting. You’re just not alone in that fight anymore,”  
She met his eyes with a lingered gaze and the faintest of smiles as he opened the car door and she followed suit.

Felicity took a breath before she put one decidedly shaky foot on the cobbled concrete beneath her. This had been as close to her former home, her former City, that she had been in what felt like forever. She knew what this place meant and what the coming days would hold, but Oliver was right, she wouldn’t break – they wouldn’t break her.

“Shall we?” Oliver smiled, extending his hand to her.  
She nodded as she took it, both literally and metaphorically she was taking his hand.

The saltiness of the air filled her nostrils as she breathed deeply. The sound of the distant crashing waves was like her own private fight song. With her hand in Oliver’s and the rich scent and sounds of the ocean she felt something she hadn’t for a long time. She felt a speckling of peace.

They walked up the wrap-around porch, the pale wooden planks of the deck framed in bright white railings. Felicity danced her fingers along the railing as her eyes trailed off to the distance where just behind the tussock yard she could see the blue of the ocean and the puff of afternoon clouds with not a single obstruction.

Oliver fumbled with his keys and unlocked the patio doors into the expansive open plan living. An old redbrick fireplace sat pride of place in the room with very little else more than a scattering of furniture and wall covered in photos.  
“I’m not much of a decorator,” he smiled as Felicity’s eyes wandered around the room.

It wasn’t crowded with mementos like the Bed and Breakfast in Texas, but everything there had been chosen by him for a reason and that made each photo that hung on the wall and each book that sat on the beach wood coffee table just that little bit more special.

“It’s perfect,” she smiled, leaning into the embrace he offered.  
“I should give you a tour,” he hummed gently kissing the crown of her head.  
“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me? I’ve got nothing really to offer you, I don’t even know what love is, what it’s supposed to feel like,” she asked, the question had been sitting at the tip of her tongue since Vegas, but she was too scared to ask it then – and too scared not to now.

“Do you trust me?” he whispered as he turned her gently around by the shoulders, and swept his finger under her chin, lifting her face to his.  
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.  
“Well, that’s the biggest part of loving someone. So you’re already most of the way there,” he kissed her lips softly, his finger still rested under her chin.

Their lips eased apart, but still remained poised a hair’s distance away.  
“Felicity,” he whispered, his lips catching against hers at each syllable, “I’m going to say something to you now and I want you to know that I mean it, every word of it, okay?”

She exhaled a soft breath against his mouth, “okay.”  
His hand cupped her face, slowly raising it once more, as his other hand slipped around her waist, holding her lovingly at the small of her back.  
“I love you,” he spoke in a hushed tone but the words were clear – the meaning behind the words even clearer

Felicity felt her body wavering against his strong hand that held her up. She had never heard those words spoken with any truth attached to them – not until Oliver.

“Will you teach me how to love you back?” she smiled, her hands slipping either side of his neck, pulling his lips towards hers, “I want to love you like that,” she whispered before her lips drove onto his, crashing together like the waves in the distance.

Tumbling together against the wall, she spun them around, her back now to the wall, trying to gain leverage over him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to hoist herself up. He bent down, scooping her thighs into his palms and pulling them upwards to his hips. She twisted her ankles behind him, locking her knees into his waist as she arched her back off the wall, grinding her pelvis against his chest.

Her tongue swept over his lips, the familiar dip of them like a pleasant memory she wanted to recount constantly. Her teeth scratched against his bottom lip ever so lightly as she mumbled her next words against them.  
“Oliver, you should show me where the bedroom is.”  
“Felicity, you don’t have to – I mean I want to, but you don’t have to-,“ he stumbled over words as his lips desperately tried to catch hers again.  
“I shouldn’t have to ask twice,” she smiled, trapping her own bottom lip between her teeth.

He carried her through the living area, randomly pointing in various directions as his lips ran hungrily across hers.  
“Livingroom, kitchen, bathroom,” he mumbled between kissing, one arm flailing in general directions  
“It looks lovely,” she muttered without looking, rashly running her fingers through his scalp as she pushed her pelvis hard against his chest.

He pulled her higher up his chest as he reached the stairs and blindly slid his feet up one stair at a time.  
“Laundry is back there,” he hummed against her neck as ran her fingertips up and down his back.  
“Good to know,” she breathed hurriedly, his mouth clamping around the pulse point on her neck.

He reached the top of the stairs, stumbling slightly though not enough to lose his balance.  
“Spare room, office,” he moaned, dropping her down slightly so his lips could meet back with hers.  
“Uhuh,” she smiled against his lips, thumbing the back of his neck.

Oliver stopped as he reached the third bedroom, he abruptly broke free from this kiss as his eyes lingered on the slightly ajar door with the wooden ‘M’ hung ever so slightly off centre and painted an almost florescent pink.

“Maddie’s room,” he sighed, realising that he had returned once again without her – although unlike before he still had the hope afforded to him that Child Services would collect her before Laurel could move on again.

Felicity unlatched her legs and slid down his waist, looking over her shoulder at the room he had stopped in front of.  
“I’m really sorry Oliver,” was all she knew to say.  
“It’s okay,” he blinked back at her, folding his lips briefly over each other “every time I get back from a job, I usually sit in there and tell her about it. I use to do it when she was a baby, and when it was just us, I didn’t go away often, but she’s always sit in the same spot on her bed and wait for her debriefing afterwards, it became a ritual for us that I carried on, even without her. Silly right?” he chuckled, sweeping his hand down her arm.

“Not at all, in fact that happens to be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. You should do that, go talk to her,” she urged kindly, placing a brief kiss on his cheek.  
“But you-,“ he started, subconsciously looking between the room and Felicity.  
“I’ll be fine, I saw the books downstairs, I’ll find something to read and I’ll just wait for you, take your time,” she smoothed her hand down his arm, squeezing hand as she stepped away.

* * *

  
“Thank you,” Oliver smiled, quietly making his way towards Felicity who had curled up on the couch, her face buried in a large hardcover book.

She looked up and smiled, “You’re welcome. A parent should always put a child first.”  
There was a sadness in her voice at how that simple truth didn’t apply in her own life.  
“You want to talk about it?” Oliver asked, sliding down on the couch next to her.  
“Nope,” she shook her head gently.  
Truth was she really didn’t. The people that she had once considered family had darkened so much of her life, she didn’t want to be living behind that anymore. She didn’t want to let them tarnish her chance at something different – at something more.

“Do you want to talk about anything?” she asked, folding a bookmark in the page she had stopped at.  
“Nope,” he replied with a smile.  
Truth was, he was happy and although he didn’t have Madeline with him, he had every hope in the world that he soon would and that alone was more than he had ever had any other time.

He had sat in Madeline’s room and told her about little things he was sure she would have enjoyed. The restaurant with the huge bull statue outside, the cabinet at the bed and breakfast that was full of vintage dolls and the stunning view of the lights from the skyloft room in Vegas. Then he told her about Felicity, the girl with the beautiful smile who he had watched plait her hair without looking and do ballet with a book on her head. _The one who helped find you. The one I hope you get to meet, you’ll love her._

“So what should we do then, it’s like three in the afternoon,” she smiled, walking her fingers up his left.  
“I haven’t shown you the master bedroom yet,” he smiled widely, slipping a hand around her waist.  
“Meh,” she shrugged playfully “nothing interesting ever happens in there though right?”  
“No,” he kissed a path down her cheek, meeting softly at her lips, “we should rectify that.” 

* * *

 

The morning sun was streaming through the open curtains, illuminating the puffy white bed linen that had been hap hazardously pushed to the floor from the hours Oliver and Felicity had spent in bed together.

She lay with her body nuzzled against his, her limbs conforming to the shape he made, lying on his chest, his head turned to look at her with softly lidded eyes. She danced her fingertips along the mountains and grooves of his back and shoulders, paying special attention to trace over the lines of the tattoos she had never asked him about before.

“What do these mean?” Felicity asked, kissing the words against his skin as her fingers traced the Roman numerals tattooed on his upper left shoulder.  
Oliver adjusted his position, bringing his other hand up to the small digits across his arm.  
“This top date is Madeline’s birthday,” he smiled at the memory before trailing his finger across the next set of numerals “this is the date I lost her. I did it so I would never forget what I was fighting for, what is important and what you helped me find” he moved his hand he to her face, gently caressing her cheek.

“I will add the date I get her back underneath.”  
“She’s lucky to have you, you care about her so much, it’s beautiful to see,” Felicity smiled, as Oliver drew lazy lines down the centre of her spine, letting the sheet slip further down her body.  
“It’s also a great way not to forget important dates,” she smiled playfully, “you better not have too many kids, you’ll run out of room.”

He leaned in and kissed her lips lightly, taking his time to delicately move across them savouring each second they spent on hers.  
“Three and a dog,” he hummed as he barely pulled his lips away, skating them close to hers.  
“That sounds like some sitcom,” she laughed rubbing her nose against his.

Felicity sat up on her palm and pushed a soft, warm kiss onto his shoulder blade as she reached around him for his discarded t-shirt that lay over the bedside lamp where he had thrown it the afternoon before.

She slipped it onto her body, the fabric hanging loosely around her frame.  
“No, where are you going?” Oliver moaned, sliding his hand onto her leg as the fabric grazed down it.  
“I’m going to make us some breakfast, we’ve barely left this bed in 16 hours Oliver,” she winked, as he pulled her playfully onto his lap.

“Who needs to leave? We have everything we need here and I bought you pizza for dinner,” he laughed, nodding towards the pizza box that was half buried under the discarded bed linen.  
Felicity pursed her lips as she sat atop him, gently scratching her fingers down his chest.  
“How do you like your eggs?” she whispered into his ear, nibbling her teeth against his earlobe  
“Over easy,” he hummed, closing his eyes to the sensation of her pelvis gently stroking against his

Felicity dusted his cheek with kisses before she slipped off him and folded down the hem of his t-shirt as it danced around her mid-thigh.  
“I thought you couldn’t cook?” Oliver asked, rolling to his side to watch as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

“I can’t, not exactly, but I’m fluent in three languages, it can’t be that hard to make eggs,” she laughed, pulling the ponytail tight at her crown.

Oliver smirked between a soft shake of his head as he planted his feet on the floor and reached for his briefs.  
“How about I make us some breakfast and you,” he smiled, pulling his briefs on, “you stay right here,” he lifted her in the air and playfully dumped her back on the bed

“Stay,” he mocked as she started to move.  
She pouted but adjusted the pillows behind her and reached for a book that he had given her while he had ordered the pizza the night before.  
“I’ll stay then,” she sighed exaggeratedly as she thumbed through the pages to find the last place she had read to.

A loud rapt on the front door echoed through the house. Oliver padded over to the balcony doors and peeled back the net curtains. It was John Diggle standing at the front door, his arms wound tightly over his chest, his feet planted shoulder width apart. Oliver knew that stance – he was in trouble.

Oliver walked from the room, turning in the doorway before he disappeared down the hall, “Stay, I mean it,” he winked, trying to allay the fear that was beginning to creep onto Felicity’s face, “it’s just work, and then I’m making you breakfast.”

* * *

  
“Where’s the girl?” John said the moment Oliver opened the door to him.  
“It’s nice to see you too John,” Oliver smiled sarcastically.  
“Is she here?” he snapped, trying to peer around Oliver.  
“No, she’s not,” Oliver lied, pushing his foot against the door to stop John moving inwards.

Felicity stopped her descent of the stairs when she heard John’s familiar voice, quietly perching herself on the third step from the landing, tucked away from prying eyes, but easily able to hear the exchange.

“Oliver, man, I’m here as your friend and your employee, you should have returned the girl yesterday to her parents,” John sighed, worry held in the frown lines of his face.  
“Actually, my instructions were to get her to the Courthouse on Wednesday, it’s only Monday,” Oliver retorted, bracing his arm on the doorframe, once more inherently blocking his friend.

It was only then John noticed Oliver’s distinct lack of clothes.  
“Are you sleeping with her Oliver?” he asked, his eyes widening with surprise.  
“Are you asking as my friend, or my employee?” Oliver replied coyly.  
“Which one would get me an honest answer?” John shook his head and pursed his lips.

“Neither, but one might come with a written warning to mind your own business,” Oliver snipped, his tone more biting that he was intending it to be.  
“Are you serious man? You barely know this girl,” John snipped back, his tone in equal measure.  
“I’m not having this discussion with you John, not as my friend and especially not as my employee, so if there is nothing else,” Oliver replied, his eyes matching John’s steeled glare.

“No, I’m not done here yet man. This girl is under your skin Oliver, you’re willing to risk everything you have for a girl you literally met less than two weeks ago. You know what happens here Oliver. They will without fail haul your ass to jail for contempt of Court, you will lose your contracts, your business and you think that shit will look good on your application to get Maddie?”  
“Don’t talk about my daughter John,” Oliver replied rashly, the vein along his neck pulsating.  
“Well someone has to. You will risk it all Oliver, all of it, because you’re sleeping with her.”

Oliver’s face grew dark, “don’t, don’t you belittle her like that,”  
If it had been anyone other than the man he considered his brother, they would already be sporting a black eye.

Felicity recoiled her body into itself, the words sharp against her heart. She was asking Oliver to risk so much. Her eyes glanced backwards to the room with the pink walls and the wooden ‘M’ on the door. She was asking Oliver to risk _too_ much.

“I get it, she’s a pretty girl and you want to save her because you couldn’t save Laurel.”  
Oliver’s face darkened, but John didn’t let up.  
“But this girl is troubled and she’s not yours to try and fix. Send her home Oliver.”  
“She’s not going anywhere near those people.”  
“Who are you to decide that? You need to let due process take its course. I can’t just stand here and watch you throw that down the toilet just to have you regret it.”  
“You don’t know shit,” Oliver snapped, briefly recalling the moment Felicity had said those exact words to him – and how true they had been.  
“And are you sure you do?” John signed, pushing a folded document against his chest.

Oliver held the folded papers where John had placed them.  
“What’s this?” Oliver asked, briefly casting his eye over it.  
“Read it for yourself, then make the right decision Oliver and take her home. She’s not yours to fix, even if you could,” John sighed, he had hoped to talk some sense into his friend, his brother, without giving him the information that Felicity’s step mother had hand delivered the day before with a warning that her step daughter was many wonderful things, but honest was not one of them.

Oliver banged the door closed with more force than he intended to, causing Felicity to jump up from her seat on the stair.

“Oliver I’m sorry, I don’t mean to come between you and your friends, and your daughter,” she spoke as her bare feet padded down the wooden stairs.

Oliver stayed with her back to her, his head stooped, it appeared to Felicity like he was reading something.  
“Oliver?” she questioned, reaching the bottom of the stairs and taking a few small steps towards him.

Oliver’s eyes moved across the paper John had given him. He understood what it was the moment he saw the word _‘Recanted’_  on it.  
“Is this true?” he asked, turning slowly to meet her, his hand outstretched with the papers.

Felicity glanced down, she recognised it immediately. Her lips dropped and her eyes blinked upward. She was not going to win this fight against the Kuttlers.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they would give that to you, I should have known,” she spoke softly and her hands folded over Oliver’s t-shirt that hung loose around her frame.

“I asked you if it was true? Did you recant your statement about your stepbrother to your psychiatrist?” Oliver asked again, his voice calm, but his eyes a swarm of emotion.

Felicity bit her lips between her teeth, the blue of her eyes welling up with tears.  
“Yes,” she responded simply, her eyes spilling the tears down her cheeks.

Oliver winched at the gravity of what he was hearing.  
But, he had seen her weep.  
He had seen her tremble at the recall.  
He had watched her crumble to the floor and struggle through each moment.  
What he had witnessed wasn’t – it couldn’t be – a lie.

“Oliver you need to take me now, you need to take me back to my father’s house,” – she would never call it home – she whimpered.  
“We’re never going to win this fight,” she cried, her shoulders slumping forward, her knees about to give way, “you, you’re risking too much, you need to take me back, please.”

No. He had seen her. He had held her. She wasn’t lying about Thomas.

“Felicity, I need you to give me something, what is this?” his hand jumped the papers around her, “give me something, Felicity, please,” he agonised over each word – he couldn’t believe that she had lied – he didn’t believe it, despite what he was holding in his hands.

“What does it matter Oliver? What does any of it matter, we won’t win this against them. Whether it be today, or Wednesday, you and I both know where I’m going and you shouldn’t have to pay any kind of price for me. You have your chance at a beautiful life, you need to take it. I only tarnish those things.”  
Her hand skimmed across his face, savouring the feeling of his rough beard against her smooth palm.  
“I won’t let you lose your chance because of me, I’m not worth it.”

“Don’t,” he sighed, stroking his face against her hand, “don’t retreat to that place where you hide from the world, where you hide from me.”

He brushed the hair that had fallen over her face backwards, kissing the top of her head before her raised it up, his eyes meeting with hers.  
“Don’t hide from me Felicity, just tell me the truth.”

She sighed quietly as her lips rolled over each other.  
“I signed it, I recanted what I had earlier told the assholes behind the white walls and iron fences because it was the only way they would let me out Oliver. Everything I told them,” she blinked up at him, catching the kindness in his eyes, “everything I told you was true. But they weren’t going to let me leave until I took it all back. They had taken twelve months from me and I couldn’t let them have a minute more, so I signed it.”

All he had to do was look in her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes didn’t hold a thing back from him. He believed her without question.

He pulled her close into an embrace.  
The idea came to him suddenly.  
He finally had a plan.

“I believe you and you Felicity are my chance at a beautiful life, and I want to be your chance too. I asked you if you trust me. I need to know that you still do.”

She blinked up at him through a curtain of tears.  
He wasn’t going to let her fall.

“I trust you,” she answered.  
“Good,” he smiled, pecking a kiss to her forehead, “I have an idea, but I need you to stay here while I look into it, okay? They can’t lay a hand on you until Wednesday, but you need to stay here, on private property, okay?”  
She nodded, she understood what he was asking.  
“I’ll be back in a little bit. Please be here when I get home Felicity, this will all work out,” he smiled down at her, praying she heard him, praying she would listen.


	14. Starling City Doors

Felicity stood nervously in front of the wood panelled doors, smoothing down the dress she was wearing as the crowds of people buzzed around them, readying themselves to start the day. She glanced up at the clock with her heart somewhere between its normal spot and the back of her throat.

 **Wednesday, 25 February 2009; 8:50am**  
She could feel her hand trembling in Oliver’s grip, it was almost ridiculous how calm he seemed.

“You guys are lucky people around here love me, you can go inside in a few minutes,” Lyla smiled as she walked up beside them, her pleasantly sensible shoes tapping along the marbled floor.

John greeted her with a kiss, straightening the jacket of his suit as he pulled away.

*******

Oliver had gone to John and Lyla after he left the house two days prior. Oliver had told them what he thought appropriate for them to know – the rest would be up to Felicity to disclose if she wished. Lyla had reacted with a tightened frown, this was not the first time she had heard Thomas Meryn’s name connected with the sort of thing Oliver was relaying.

John, for his part, had listened to Oliver with a considered expression on his face. He took each bit of information in and when he was certain Oliver had finished his relay of accounts and shown him briefly the statement Felicity had made and which Oliver had written down, he mulled over it, stroking his palm down his jaw and neck, before standing up, taking a step towards Oliver and embracing him.

John and Lyla had returned with Oliver later on in the afternoon and much to Oliver’s relief Felicity was still there, sitting crossed legged under the blanket on the couch, reading the book she had started the day before – just waiting for him.

It had been John that had hugged Felicity first. It had taken her a moment to realise what was going on as his strong arms just held her. _We’re your family now_ he had said with a deep but soft voice and he had meant every word of it.

Lyla had been next to speak, offering whatever help she could and laying out Oliver’s plan for the hearing 11am, Wednesday morning.

Felicity had listened – she understood exactly what Oliver had arranged and the consequences of it. Only after she made Oliver repeat at least a dozen times that he was certain about this did she agree to do it.

*******

And now here they were, standing outside the doors, waiting for the clock to tick over.

 **8:52am**  
“Are you sure Oliver? I mean are you really sure about this,” she asked, nervously tapping her white mary jane’s on the marbled floor.

He squeezed her hand and leant in towards her ear – these were words only she needed to hear.  
“Absolutely princess,” he smiled against her ear before kissing her cheek.  
It made Felicity smile how the meaning behind his use of that name for her had changed so significantly in 14 days. It had gone from being a somewhat condescending quip to personal term of endearment.

It was not lost on her that they had found a connection in each other than many people spent months or years cultivating – whereas they had spent 14 days. The way they were bound to each other was inexplicable but also inescapable. It was real.

“I’m just going to freshen up, I’ll meet you inside,” she smiled, nodding towards the bathroom door on the far wall behind them.  
“Okay, see you in there, don’t be late,” he winked, kissing her cheek a second time, careful not to mar the beautiful red lipstick she had so carefully applied that morning.

Oliver watched her walk away, a vision in a soft white sun dress  
_The real Felicity – his Felicity – and she was beautiful._

“Are you sure about this Oliver?” Lyla asked, holding a case file tight to her chest, her eyes narrowing in on Oliver’s.  
“She’s a beautiful girl and she needs help, to be protected, but you know that doing this will paint a huge target on your back, and with everything else,” she sighed, letting the casefile drop slightly revealing Madeline’s name, “just, are you sure?” she repeated with a brief smile.

“Absolutely,” Oliver replied, watching Felicity disappear into the bathroom.  
He blinked back at Lyla. He had walked Felicity into the lion’s den and he needed to be sure he would be able to walk her out again afterwards.  
“Are you sure this will work?”  
Lyla nodded thoughtfully.  
“Legally, there’s no way this can’t work, but her family have money, they have connections and they’re going to be pissed,” she spoke frankly.  
“Let them,” Oliver shrugged “I have the best lawyer in the City.”

Lyla smiled as John patted Oliver’s shoulder, his eyes watching the clock on the wall.

 **9:00am**  
“It’s time to go in man.”  
Oliver nodded to his friend as they stepped through the doors.

* * *

  
It felt like a case of déjà vu as Felicity and Oliver stood outside another almost identical set of Courtroom doors glancing back at a clock behind him.

 **10:55am**  
“The Judge will call us any minute,” Lyla spoke as she checked the paperwork she had spilled out onto her lap as she sat down behind them.  
“Felicity don’t talk to anyone directly. Sit by me, keep your eyes forward and if you need to speak up I’ll let you know, okay?” she continued, briefing Felicity with a smile.

“I understand,” Felicity replied simply, it was her stomach that was now somewhere near the top of her throat.  
“Oliver you have to sit in the gallery behind, John will stay with you,” Lyla looked up at Oliver, narrowing in her eyes once more, “you need to not say a damned word, do you understand me?” she reprimanded, knowing Oliver would struggle with those instructions.

He nodded reluctantly. There was plenty he wanted to say, but Lyla was right. This was not the time or the place for it.

Oliver watched as Felicity’s eyes widened and she took a step backwards, pushing her body against the wall. He looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse at what she had seen. Noah Kuttler and Rebecca Merlyn, flanked by two sharply dressed lawyers had entered the waiting area.

Felicity could feel her heart racing, she had not seen them for over a year, but every welled up emotion about them was beginning to surface.

“Felicity, look at me,” Oliver soothed, cupping her head in his palms.  
She looked up, her lips folding over each other, but her emotions held at bay.  
“You are stronger than they ever gave you credit for. You can do this, you can do this because you’re strong and because you’re a fighter. And I’ll be right behind you, watching you do it, okay?”  
She smiled widely. He was right. She was stronger than what people assumed. She had navigated a tunnel of darkness virtually alone and she had come through, a little bent and little dirty but nevertheless she had come through it complete, she had come through strong enough to step through those doors and prove it to them.

 **11:00am**  
It was time.

Felicity watched with steeled eyes and a exhale of her breath as her father, step mother and their overpaid lawyers walked in through the doors ahead of them.

She was strong enough.  
Oliver clasped her left hand into his, his thumb stroking a circle on her wrist.  
“Hold on to me?” she breathed nodding down towards door.  
“Always,” Oliver smiled down at her hand before lifting it to his lips and placing a fleeting but encapsulating kiss on the back of it, his eyes catching the reflection of the light on it.  
“Forever,” he repeated the sentiment.

“Let’s piss these assholes off then,” she winked.

Oliver walked as far as the bar at the front of the gallery. Felicity watched Lyla cross the threshold as John took a seat directly behind the counsel table. Oliver let Felicity’s hand slip from his as she walked through the waist high fence, the bar, that separated the areas of the Courtroom.

She could feel her father’s eyes on her but she didn’t dare look, not yet. He had been a distant father, but not a bad one, at least not until he walked from the room after she bore her soul. When he chose someone else above his own daughter.

The room rose as the gowned Judge entered the room and each one waited till he sat down before they did.

The Judge shuffled paper across his bench, a slight confused look caught in the furrow of his brow.  
“Counsel, is your paperwork in order?” he questioned the other lawyers.  
The one in the perfectly pressed grey suit stood, “Yes your Honour.”  
The Judge turned his attention to Lyla, "and this document is to be entered into the Court records?”

Grey suit leaned forward trying to squint at the paper the Judge held up.  
“Yes your Honour, it has been filed this morning,” Lyla responded, her palms flat on the table as she stood, as a dutiful sign of respect.  
“Your Honour, we weren’t served with anything this morning,” grey suit quipped back.  
“It was faxed to counsel’s chambers an hour ago, if my learned friend spent less time primping his beard he may have seen it,” Lyla remarked, garnering a smirk from even the bailiff.

“Mmmhmm,” the Judge breathed, like an exacerbated parent.  
“For the record, please have your client recite her full name,” the Judge requested, looking at Lyla over the rim of his glasses  
Lyla nodded down to Felicity, who, just as instructed by Lyla stood.

She took a deep breath, looking briefly over her shoulder at Oliver who smiled a nod back.  
“Felicity Megan Queen,” she said without the hint of a quiver in her voice.

“Your Honour, Ms Kuttler, Smoak, Queen, whatever,” grey suit shrugged her off, “she has changed her name previously, it’s not relevant.”  
The Judge scowled at the interruption.  
“I remind you to speak when spoken to counsel,” he huffed, “if you had been in your chambers you would be better prepared,” he lowered his glasses and folded his hands on the bench.

“This piece of paper is a certified marriage licence, it appears Ms Smoak is now Mrs Queen.”

“Felicity, you got married?” Noah called across the room, his voice both surprised and saddened  
Felicity kept her eyes forward and her chin up.  
“Who to?” he continued, his brow furrowed at the news.

Felicity twisted her head to look at the man who she once considered a cornerstone of her life.  
“To someone who didn’t leave the fucking room,” she snapped, rubbing her fingers across the diamond ring Oliver had placed on her finger that morning.

Lyla placed a calming hand on Felicity’s shoulder.

“Your Honour, this is a farce, she’s not of a right mind,” grey suit gingerly objected.  
“With all due respect to counsel, this hearing isn’t to decide the validity of a marriage licence given in this Court house, it’s to decide whether Mrs Queen is able to handle her own affairs and as I’m sure counsel,” she snipped at Mr grey suit, “understands should Your Honour wish to proceed with this, with respect, idiotic application, any orders placed as to the general care of Mrs Queen would fall to her next of kin.”

Lyla paused, casually smoothing her fingers across the desk.  
“Which, as Your Honour is no doubt aware, would be my client’s husband Mr Oliver Queen, not her father.”

Oliver smiled to himself.  
_Let’s piss these assholes off then_

* * *

  
The decision was a swift one, there was nothing to argue and no case to be made. It was over. Felicity was free to make her own choices – the one thing she had always wanted.

She refused to watch them walk past her, refused to meet the confused look of her father and the glare of her step mother. She wasn’t ashamed, not by a long shot, but they didn’t deserve her attention. Once they walked through that door years ago, they lost the right to get anything from her.

Her refusing to look at them now was a triumph to her. An outward display of the nothingness they now occupied. They were nothing to her, just like they showed she was nothing to them.

“Felicity, I’ve only ever wanted what was best for you. You’ve made a mistake, you’re not thinking clearly,” Noah pleaded as Rebecca clung to his arm.

Felicity stayed her eyes locked forward.  
They were nothing.  
They would get nothing.

She heard the bang of the doors closing behind her.  
It was done.

It was only then she turned around and her eyes met with Oliver’s.  
Her chance.  
Their chance.

* * *

 

“So that’s it, it’s done?” Felicity asked as they stepped out into the afternoon breeze.  
“Certainly for now, I don’t think they have any grounds to repeal the marriage and even if they try, I’ll bury them in paperwork, I don’t believe in false hope, but I think you’re free of them,” Lyla smiled, a kindly hand touching Felicity’s shoulder before she disappeared back inside leaving Oliver and Felicity on the Courthouse steps.

“Thank you just doesn’t seem enough,” she hugged Oliver’s waist, finding the soothing sound of his heartbeat.  
“You never, ever have to thank me,” Oliver breathed, warm against her skin as he lay a kiss against her forehead.

“Felicity, long time no see,” a voice sniggered behind them.  
Between what Oliver knew from newspapers and the feeling of Felicity’s body tensing against his body, there was no question, the sharply dressed 20 something walking towards them was Thomas.

“If I had known you were back in town,” he smirked.

Felicity blinked up to catch the steeled look in Oliver’s eyes and feel the constrict of his chest as his fist clenched beside her.  
“Don’t, he’s not worth it,” Felicity touched her hand to Oliver’s cheek, bringing his eyes to hers, “let’s just go, please.”

Despite Oliver’s animal instinct to pummel the guy, Felicity wanted to leave....so he was going to leave.

They took two steps down the stairs before Thomas called out after them  
“New boyfriend Felicity?” a laugh, “you’re welcome man.”

Oliver rushed at him, his fist poised to strike before Felicity caught his arm, refusing to look at Thomas, she kept her back to him and her eyes trained on Oliver.  
“Don’t, please, think of Maddie, this fucker isn’t worth the risk,” she spoke only to him.  
Oliver’s lips twitched as his chest heavily rose and fell.  
He really wanted to wipe the stairs with that man’s smirk.

“Isn’t it almost your birthday?” Thomas said, smacking his lips together.  
Felicity didn’t realise what was happening until her balled fist connected with his nose. She swore the crack of his nose breaking echoed off the white washed steps before he stumbled backwards and fell two steps down.

Felicity recoiled her fist with a muttered, “fuck,” that had hurt her hand more than expected, but still completely worth it.

Oliver stepped towards Thomas and placed a forceful hand on his shoulder, leaning in towards his ear he whispered something Felicity couldn’t hear. Thomas’ eyes widened, he nodded, picked himself up and scampered down the stairs, disappearing into a black town car.

“That was a good punch,” Oliver smiled, “but plant your feet next time, you could have sent him down another three stairs.”  
He took her hand gently into his and checked her red knuckles, smoothing down each finger.  
“Wiggle your fingers,” he instructed and she complied.  
“I think you’re good, no broken bones,” he winked, lifted her hand up and kissed the back of it.  
“What did you say to him to make him leave like that?” she asked curiously.  
“I said please,” he grinned, full teeth.

* * *

  
“Are you sure about this?” Oliver asked stopping the car in front of Police station.  
Felicity felt his hand gently rub across her knee as she looked out the window. She took a deep breath, holding Oliver’s notebook – her words – tightly in her hands.  
“Absolutely,” she nodded, feeling the warmth of the sunlight on her face.  
“Do you want me to come with you?”  
She smiled over her shoulder at him.  
“No, this is something I need to do alone.”

Felicity needed to know that she could do this. That she could stand up on her own strength and walk through that door.

“I’ll be right here waiting,” he leaned in and placed the softest of kisses against her cheek.

Felicity stepped from the car and walked up to the glass doors. She had stood in front of many different doors today. This time she stood physically alone, but as a soft breeze pushed against her shoulders and she glanced back to see Oliver, she had an assured feeling that she would never stand alone, in spirit, again.

She waited for the automated doors to open and then she walked through with a strength and purpose that was hers.

* * *

  
“Wait,” Oliver announced as Felicity went to step in the house behind him.  
“What?” she replied, jumping back at the haste in his voice.  
“I’m supposed to carry you over this,” he laughed, gesturing to the floor below his feet, “I married you remember.”

She laughed, looking down at the ring on her finger. It was a simple white gold band with three small diamonds set down into the band, they weren’t big and it wasn’t showy but Oliver had chosen it and she loved it.

“Yeah, you kind of did,” she smiled, rolling the ring around her finger.  
“So, let’s do this right then,” he winked, scooping her up into his arms, just like the night he had carried her to the bed.

The night she learned she could trust again and he learned he could love again.

She looked up at the white wooden frame of the door in front of her as her arms slipped around his neck and held on.

Another door.  
But this door didn’t close off a chapter of her past.  
This door opened up the future.

“We’re crazy aren’t we?” she smiled, touching the top of the door frame as they walked under it.  
“Most certainly,” he laughed, still carrying her across the living room.  
“But I’m okay with that. Are you?” he continued, his journey now taking them up the stairs.  
“Fuck yes,” she grinned as he kicked the bedroom door open.

Felicity tapped at his chest to let her down, which he did with a playful grimace.

She turned her back on him and pulled her hair over one shoulder, cocking her neck slightly to the same side.  
“A little help,” she whispered seductively, using her free hand to point towards the zip at the back of the soft white chiffon dress.

Oliver pushed his body against hers, eager to bridge any gap between them. He drew his fingers along her collarbone and down the back of her neck, eliciting a soft sigh of contentment to fall from Felicity’s lips.

Slowly he trailed his fingers down her back, stopping at the zip that sat just along from the bottom of her shoulder blades. He threaded his fingers under the soft fabric of the dress, pinching the zipper between his thumb and forefinger.

He leaned in close, swiping his nose up her spine, breathing in the sensually unique smell of Felicity. His lips pushed down against her satiny skin, humming breathy wet kisses in a winding trail across her upper back.

Gradually he moved the zipper down, eager to make each miniscule movement of it take as long as possible, so he could stand here, behind her, with his lips pressed to her skin, making her sigh between still beautifully painted red lips.

When the zip would move no further, his hands swept delicately over her shoulders, following the straps of the dress down her arms. It floated to the floor before she turned around to face him, the soft lace of her bra pulling across her breasts as her chest rose and fell, like it had the first time he had lovingly laid his hands on her.

Her lidded eyes smiled up at him as she folded her hands behind his shirt placket, unbuttoning down as she went before she returned to his collar and loosed the tie around his neck with an eased sliding of the fabric.

She pulled the tie up over his head and threw it carelessly somewhere in the space behind her as she undid the last button on his shirt and slipped it from his body, dancing her fingertips along the white gold band he wore on his finger.

“So crazy,” she hummed against the round of his shoulder, licking tiny swirls over his warm, smooth skin.  
“Unbelievably out of our minds,” he cooed back, pushing his index finger into the small of her back and dragging it up to the clasp of her bra, undoing it with minimal effort.  
“Bat shit crazy,” she smirked, loosening his leather belt and sliding it with a crack out of the belt loops.

“Completely bonkers,” Oliver spoke into her neck, dragging his lips across the base of it and nipping his teeth gently into it.  
“Just imagine what your neighbours will think when I regale them with the story of how we met,” she smiled, panting against the sensation of his teeth scouting into her neck as she released his fly and pushed the black pleated trousers down his legs, using her foot to push them the rest of the way down.

“Will you do it over brunch with the couple next door?” Oliver moaned as her hand cupped at his growing member in time with the slow kisses he drew across her collarbone.

“MmmHmm,” she sighed, “I’ll cook an omelette and we’ll drink orange juice as I tell them about that time you knocked me out and carried me from a strip club,” she closed her hand around his balls making his body tense euphorically.

“Don’t forget to mention the outfit you were wearing, those shorts are definitely worth mentioning, especially with that frill on your ass. Mmmm,” he moaned, caressing her butt between both hands.  
“You know, I still have that outfit, pink wig and all,” she smiled, pushing her soft breasts against his solid chest as she slipped her hands coly under the waistband of his briefs.

Oliver cocked his head back, his face sporting a decidedly gingerly looking grin.  
“I’m really going to need to inspect that outfit soon, maybe not over brunch with the neighbours.”  
“You did marry me, you crazy fucker, so I guess that’s only fair,” she laughed, swiftly moving the briefs down his legs before she pushed him onto the bed.

“Best decision I’ve made in a long time,” he smiled without a hint of sarcasm in his voice as he pulled her down on top of him.

Felicity kissed her red lips against the mounds of his chest, leaving faint red smudges like footprints on his skin as she worked her way downward in a haze of lips, tongue and tiny scratches of her teeth.

Her legs straddled atop him, her pelvis grinding against his, eager to feel the heated friction between them, as his shaft slid roughly against her inner thigh. She twisted her hips, edging his throbbing member downward, nestled against his groin as she dropped her weight a little further down, pushing his shaft between her heat to a chorus of breathy moans of appreciation from Oliver.

She blinked her eyes upwards, her lips still melting kisses into his tensed muscles. Lightly she touched her hand to his face. In a ritual that had become hers she trickled her fingertips across his high cheekbones, down through the soft scruff of his upper cheek and down his chiselled jawline, lingering her hand under his chin, her thumb rubbing down on his lip. She knew this face, every line of it, she could trust this face.

Felicity held her thumb to his bottom lip as she thrust her hips against him, sliding him deeply between her folds, the thin fabric of her panties the only obstruction. His lip twitched and tensed under her thumb as he gasped at the sudden flood of sensation. She smiled, enjoying the feeling of his tongue swiping instinctively across his lips, dewy against her thumb still planted there.

She walked her body down his chest, propping her body up on an elbow to his side, her breasts pushed flat against him and her thumb still stationed on his lip.

His penis throbbed between her legs, twitching without instruction, the slight movement catching her perfectly in her bundle of nerves, the arousal making her core twist inward.  
“Oliver,” she whispered into his ear.  
He moaned a breathless reply.  
“Oliver,” she whispered a second time, grinding her hips systematically up and against his shaft, pulsating the pressure as she drove back down it.  
“Fucking fuck,” he cursed, pulling his bottom lip and her thumb inwards, sucking on them both for a few seconds before releasing them.  
“Made you swear,” she laughed lightly, fluttering her lips across his earlobe.

Oliver narrowed his eyes at her mischievously before he playfully flipped her onto her back and gingerly announced, “two can play at that game.”

He hovered above her, still decidedly careful not to put his weight against her, it was his ritual to bear his own weight on his palm and he would continue to do so for as long as she needed that definitive separation.

He pressed his dewy lips against her breast bone, smoothing his free hand down the arch of her back, settling it in the dip of her tailbone.

Oliver dragged his lips down the centre of her chest, sucking in just below the bow of her rib cage, lifting her by the small of her back to deepen the pressure of the kiss. The sensation of his warm breath and dewy lips causing her body to shiver underneath him. His tongue swarmed against her luxurious skin, leaving the faintest misting of moisture in the fine pores of her skin.

Felicity bit in against her lip, refusing to succumb to his will to get her to curse like she had him. He drove his mouth up towards her nipple, taking just the tip of it between his pursed lips, sucking the rest in, in a sensually slow manner. He felt her body writhe atop his palm causing him to deepen the kiss, massaging his chin into the underside of her breast as he sucked her fleshy breast in further, playfully swishing his tongue across the tip of her nipple, now buried in his mouth.

Oliver moved his eyes upward, eager to scout out the expression on her face. She folded both her lips into each other, biting her teeth on the inside of them, still holding her voice inward despite the incredible feeling his mouth was lavishing on her breast.

“Hmmmmm,” he moaned, the reverberation dancing across her sensitive nipple.  
The hand poised on the small on her back moved suddenly, gripping the band of her sateen white panties, swiping them over her pert ass and slipping them down her legs in one smooth, frictionless swoop.

Oliver’s mouth backtracked to its original path down the centre of her torso, lapping up against her skin in a peppering of purposeful kisses as his hand moved between her thighs. His thumb pushed into the v of her mound, his fingers folding underneath, caressing the curve of her ass.

Holding his fingers in place, smoothing patterns on her ass, he moved his thumb downward, slowly touching against her aroused folds. As he kissed in against her navel he dove his thumb between her warmed folds. Felicity giggled seconds before she gasped as two differing sensations created a cacophony of pleasure ricocheting down her entire body.

“Felicity,” he sighed against her skin, his mouth reaching her heat.  
She shook her head into the pillow her hands reaching for another pillow, her lips twisted in against themselves.

Oliver kissed between her fold just above the spot his thumb continued to massage, his breath skidded against her bundle of nerves making her toes curl under themselves as she pushed the other pillow into her face, moaning into the cotton pillowcase.

“Felicity,” he whispered directly between her folds, rolling his tongue over the ‘l’ of her name, sending an unimaginable spike of pleasure coursing down her legs.  
She shook her head furiously under the pillow, refusing to give him the satisfaction he was seeking.

“Felicity,” he repeated the same movement, but this time the tongue roll ended with a deep flick inside her, his nose and warm breath crashing against her bundle of nerves.  
“Fuck!” she cried out into the cotton weave.  
“There it is,” he laughed against her heat as his hand rose up her pelvis bettering the angle for him to dust a smattering of kisses in places that made her weave her hips into him.

Oliver wasn’t letting up, flicking his tongue around the aroused folds of her entrance, delectably enjoying the way it made her back arch and her nails dig into his shoulders.

She panted breathlessly into the pillow until she cast it aside, desperate to watch him devour the spreading warmth between her legs.

Her nails dug further into his skin, piercing the outer layer as he pushed his tongue into her, a gust of pleasure sending a battering of mouthed curse words across her lips. She felt her body constricting around him, he felt it too as he up the pace, pushing her pelvis further into the air, holding it there as he tantalizingly teased her heat between his lips, kissing and nuzzling into her as his tongue worked it’s way in circles around her. She clenched her thighs, desperate to hold the moment a little longer before she caved.

Sensing her closing in orgasm Oliver pulled back, he wanted to feel it spilling around his now throbbing member. He watched her eyes fluttering, riding a wave that was hers alone at this moment. She blinked at him, nodding to his implied requested.

She wanted to feel the pressure of him entering her, filling her.

He lowered her hips and walked his hands back up the sides of her. He swayed his penis between her folds before she reached down and grabbed him, guiding him into her, her own body lifting to accommodate him.

Felicity gasped as she felt the familiar sensation of him wholly inside her. She smoothed her hand down under his shaft, rolling her fingers over his swelling balls, she wanted him to collapse over the edge first. Oliver’s lips fell to her neck, fumbling kisses between puffed breaths as he thrust back and forth, taking himself as deeply as he could go, sliding in frictionless motion in and out of her.

She tightened herself around him, massaging her fingers under the shaft.  
He moaned loudly into her shoulder as he thrust one last time before spilling himself into her. She breathed through the release, feeling it tease her sensitive walls. It was enough and seconds later she felt her own warm release, the feeling of which pushed another moan from Oliver’s lips.

“Made you shoot first,” she sighed through her climax, giggling softly into his ear.

* * *

The sun was just starting to set when a ringing came from the pocket of Oliver’s discarded pants.

“I’m just going to ignore that,” he breathed, kissing a trail down Felicity’s naked stomach as she twitched a little underneath him at the sensation, her body still floating over the waves of the past hours they had spent together.

“You should get it, it could be important,” she sighed, a tiny gasp following as he blew a soft breath between her legs.

He bemoaned at the suggestion, but she could be right.

He slipped out from under the covers with a playful huff and fumbled through the pocket of his pants.

He didn’t stop to look at the caller display.  
“Hello?” he asked casually.  
“Oliver, are you home?” Lyla asked.  
“Uh, yeah, why? Is everything alright?” he couldn’t tell by her tone, but she sounded a little off.  
“Can you come outside?”  
“Sure, is there a reason?”  
“Just, put some clothes on and come outside, as soon as you can.”  
He could hear her smiling down the phone. He was after all on his honeymoon.

“I’ll be right there,” he replied, before hanging up and slipping on his briefs.

“Everything okay?” Felicity asked, rolling her naked body towards him.  
“I think so, it was Lyla, she needs me to go outside, she didn’t say why.”  
“Should I come?” Felicity asked, sitting up on her elbows.  
“Yes, but,” he paused, “stay close to the house, just in case okay?”

She nodded as she slipped out the other side of the bed and replaced the dress and underwear that Oliver had almost torn off her.

He padded down the stairs, with her a few steps behind, pulling back her slightly mattered hair into a bun.

Oliver walked through the door and across the porch. Turning the corner of the house he saw Lyla standing in front of a dark car parked close to the curb, talking with an older women in a tweed pants suit.

Lyla saw him in the distance, maybe 20 feet away she gestured for him to stop as she finished the conversation with the pants suit.

Pants suit looked out towards Oliver, back at Lyla and nodded after a few words Oliver couldn’t make out she reached over and opened the back passenger side door.

Two little feet plopped down on the grass verge as two large blue eyes squinted at the rays of the sun, setting behind Oliver.

A smile then a shouted word Oliver never thought he’d hear again.  
“Daddy?” Madeline called as she rushed a few feet forward.

Oliver’s heart leapt and his feet couldn’t move fast enough to close the gap between them  
“Maddie” he cried, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her clear into the air

He held her so tight against his chest, she squirmed only a little to gain a breath before she nuzzled into his neck, her tiny nose pushing in on him as she kissed him with puckered lips.  
“I missed you daddy,” she said softly, like a secret into his ear.  
“I’ve missed you too baby girl, but I’m here and you’re home now and I’m never letting you go” he closed his eyes, drinking in every sensation of his daughter in his arms as tears sprung from his eyes.

She was home.

Felicity watched from a distance behind, her palm pressed to her chest. A welling of delight bubbling forth from inside her. The moment between them was the most touching thing she had ever seen.  
_There he was – the complete Oliver._

**~The End~**

 


	15. Epilogue

**~18 months later~**

  
Felicity sat with her feet buried in the sand, her body facing the rolling ocean ahead of her with her eyes closed to the warm mid-afternoon sun on her face. It felt perfect.

She breathed the saltiness of the air in deeply, before taking the pen back into her naked left hand. With the sound of the waves like a chant willing her on, she opened the journal and began to write.

_18 months later I find myself sitting in the most perfect of locations, enjoying the sensation of the tiny grains of sand between my toes and basking in the luxurious warmth of the sun._

_Much has changed, the biggest change of all would be me. There is a sense of peace knowing that, while your past has shaped you, it does not always need to define you. You do not always need to hide in its dark places or be embarrassed at the times you fell or the times you failed. You stand up again. You take another step forward. How you deal with your past is how you will see your future. Deal with it in strength and honesty, they are your greatest tools._

_Thomas is where he belongs now, serving behind actual bars over the symbolic ones he put around me. My statement became a catalyst to others stepping forward. I was not the first; and unfortunately I was not the last, but we made a collective and loud statement that we would be the only ones._

_The evidence was overwhelming, I am told he had kept mementoes of some – I am told there were items of clothing still stained with his actions, videos of others too young or too inebriated to consent and other trinkets that I do not wish to think too much on. I do not know whether I garnered enough of a place in his sick life to warrant a trophy being kept of me, but the way the officer looked at me as he was asking me if I wanted to know has always led me to believe that there was and that it wasn’t a small thing._

_I did not want to know. That would serve me no benefit. He had already taken so much, I couldn’t bear the thought that there was more insult to add._

_All this evidence stacked up against him, it was not surprising he tried to make a deal. None was offered, but he pled guilty all the same, likely hoping his early plea would be a mitigating factor. The sentencing Judge did offer a reduction of 20 years because of his early guilty plea – I believe this is more a requirement than her feeling he deserved it – however it made no difference when she passed the judgement of 45 years to life. Thomas Merlyn would rot in jail and that was just fine with me._

_I have no forgiveness to offer him or Rebecca. I need only to forgive myself. Not because I did anything wrong, but because I thought I had. I am working on it. Sometimes the guilt still creeps in, the times that I wonder if I could have been the last if I spoke up earlier. But then I think of the girls before me and how they must share the same guilt over my story and how much I wished they wouldn’t._

_We have no blame._  
_It’s a mantra I repeat to myself if I find the shadows creeping in._

 _My father and Rebecca are now divorced, unsurprisingly._  
_He has reached out, asking for forgiveness and a second chance._  
_Perhaps one day I will be ready to travel that path. But for now, I do not have those things to offer him. He sends money, but I return it – I never needed that from him. I do not blame him for what Thomas did to me, that violation was his and his alone, but I do blame him for failing to do what a parent should – listen, believe, protect. After I told him everything he did none of those things._

_And as for Oliver, my knight in a vintage mustang, the one who caught me when I jumped – Oliver is…_

Felicity felt the warm and familiar kiss of lips she knew well press up against her neck. She had been so engrossed in her writing she had not heard their approach.  
“Mint chocolate chip, as requested,” Oliver smiled, placing the white and green striped ice cream cup in front of her.

She folded the pen into the journal and put it to one side before taking the cup from his hands.  
“Perfect, thank you,” she smiled, grazing a hand up the side of his face as he settled himself behind her, his legs wrapping either side of her.

“And I got vanilla with extra sprinkles,” Madeline declared, plopping herself next to Felicity, a scattering of sand spilling onto the Felicity’s dress.  
“Oops, sorry mom,” she grinned, trying to swipe her little hand across it to remove the dusting.

The adoption papers had been certified only a month prior. Laurel has lost all legal rights to Madeline; and Felicity, when Oliver asked, had without hesitation agreed to adopt Madeline. There were legal reasons for this, good ones that made a lot of sense, but mostly Oliver had wanted Madeline to never feel alone and to know how a good mother could be.

“It’s not a problem, we should all have a sprinkling of sand on us,” Felicity winked as she buried Oliver’s toes beside her in a mountain of sand, eliciting a raucous burst of laughter from the little girl.

“Cheap Oliver wouldn’t spring for a triple scoop,” Thea sighed as she sat down beside Madeline, licking the spoon of her chocolate ice cream.

She was on a break from boarding school and had been both overly excited and extremely maddened that Oliver had got married without her being able to be there. It was one of the few regrets that Oliver and Felicity shared – that both Madeline and Thea were not there, but it had been a circumstance that Thea at least understood.

Nevertheless, Thea had dutifully and slyly, with the help of Lyla and John arranged a second wedding of sorts in a quaint little cottage hidden between trees on the outskirts of town where fairy lights danced in the night sky and Felicity wore a long white lace vintage dress that had belonged to Oliver’s mother and which, with a stealth that the FBI would be proud of, Thea had altered to fit Felicity like a glove.

It had been perfect.

Oliver ignored Thea’s playful complaint as he slipped his arms around Felicity’s waist and pushed his chest gently against her back, his nose breathing in the scent of her hair as he tenderly kissed her temple.

“And how is my little boy doing?” he hummed, placing his chin on Felicity’s shoulder and smoothing his hands across her rounded – and very pregnant – stomach.  
“And what makes you think it’s a boy?” Felicity smiled, easing her back onto his chest, her pregnancy now at the final stage where using him like a back brace gave her instant relief.

Oliver smiled as he felt the fierce kick against his palm.  
“With a boot like that, he’s got to be a boy. Plus I’m surrounded by girls, I think it’s only fair,” he smiled, looking down at the things he had, the things he held most precious.

Oliver had added two more dates to his arm. Two more dates that showed him what was worth fighting for, XI.II.MMIX (11.02.2009) as a reminder of the day he met Felicity and XXV.II.MMIX² (25.02.2009) the day Maddie came home and the day they got married. In a few weeks he would add another – the birthday of their child together.

“Are your fingers still swollen?” Thea asked as she watched Felicity instinctively rub them  
“Yes, I can’t even fit my wedding ring anymore. It is time for this munchkin to come out already,” Felicity laughed, placing a hand atop Oliver’s.

“How is the book writing coming along?” Oliver ask, blissfully enjoying the roll of her stomach against his palm  
“It’s a work in progress,” she smiled, tapping her hand against the journal.

“Daddy, my hands are kinda dirty,” Madeline laughed, holding her ice cream covered hands now coated in a layer of sand.  
“Alright baby girl, let’s get you cleaned up,” Oliver laughed, reluctantly moving his hand away from Felicity.

“Are you coming?” he asked as both Thea and Madeline headed off towards the house up the dunes.  
“Soon,” Felicity smiled as Oliver leaned down at placed a softly sensual kiss on her lips.  
“Yell out if you can’t get up,” he winked, taking the opportunity to touch her bump once more.

Felicity looked around to make sure Madeline was safely out of earshot.  
“Fuck you Mr Queen,” she laughed, flicking him the middle finger.

“I love you,” he smiled, unable to resist kissing her a second time.  
“I love you too,” she replied.

Felicity watched him run up the dunes and tackle Madeline into his arms before she picked up the journal and read over her last lines.

  
_And as for Oliver, my knight in a vintage mustang, the one who caught me when I jumped – Oliver is…_

_Oliver is my perfect._

_I still firmly believe that he gave me much more than I ever gave him – he would disagree with his pensive frown and his folded arms – but I do believe that. Not in the type of way where I feel like I can’t measure up, but in the type of way that makes me feel unbelievably safe in his arms._

_Oliver allowed me to see that I was more than the rich girl with the chip on her shoulder. He showed me that I was worth more than the skin I wore._

_Oliver is the first and only man I have ever said ‘I love you’ to; and while I may only be young in many people’s eyes I have absolutely no doubt that when the sun sets on our time here, he will also be the last. I will love him forever._

_In the best way possible he is permanently written on my heart, in my bloodstream – under my skin._

**~**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note:
> 
> Wow, where to start…..
> 
> I have absolutely loved the bones of this story and my little onions have become very dear to me, this was the story I had in my head and I am glad to have seen it to the end with you (there will be no sequel because it would pale in comparison and be like Speed 2 or something equally as tripe). Thank you for coming with me along the way.
> 
> A big thank you to the people who have left comments and kudos for me. Those that have found me on twitter and those that have just quietly read along with anonymous enjoyment (I hope). To see how this story has been enjoyed brings all kinds of warm fuzzies to my heart.
> 
> A special thanks goes out to those who have let me pick their brains and those that have encouraged me keep writing. I thanked you in the beginning and I thank you now you wonderful little sausages. You know who you are xoxoxox
> 
> Thank you xox  
> @someonesaidcake


	16. Epilogue Two: Jackson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was intended as a "I can't believe you read this fic every year, I'm so emotional" present for Emms, it's a little late, but I hope you like it doll xox

“A little harder,” Felicity groaned, her hips bucking to feel something more than the delicate lines that Oliver's digits were drawing between her legs  
“Is it even safe?” Oliver sighed as he recoiled his tentative hand before he dotted a soft trail of chaste kisses down the sweeping curve of her back as she lay back to his chest.  
“Please,” she almost whimpered the word, her need was driving her crazy, even at 8 ½ months pregnant Felicity felt like an empty space that would only find relief in what her husband could give her.

 _Husband_ , that still sounded so strange to say out loud but she often found herself wistfully reminding herself that Oliver was just that.

What the two of them had was insatiable and Felicity was always, _always_ , fully satisfied, but the further along her pregnancy she went the more hesitant Oliver became. It wasn’t physical, the rock hard erections he still developed indicated that, but he had become extremely concerned with just how much the baby could _feel_.

They had found quite a pleasurable compromise in his tongue which he used frequently to surpass each previous time, however tonight she had a hollow yearning that, even with his skilled tongue, was still left wanting.

“Oliver, it’s cruel to leave a woman unfulfilled,” she groaned as she ground her smooth ass into the base of Oliver’s shaft, “just pretend I’m holding a pillow.”  
“I just don’t want to start any sort of chain reaction,” Oliver cautiously sighed as his erection grew with a mind of its own and his fingers drew soft lines along her collar bone.  
“Do you think my vagina is some sort of blocked sink Oliver?” Felicity huffed, her tone scolding almost.

“Honey,” Oliver simpered as his lips puckered a kiss against the hot, velvet skin of her neck, “remember when you told me to tell you when you were being irrational?”  
“No,” she replied as her eyes lulled closed with the erotic sensation of his lips.  
“You said that I should remind you…”  
“No, Oliver, I don’t remember,” she warned with one raised brow, “since when do you have such a good memory?”  
Oliver smiled as his fingers swept down her chest.  
_Point taken._

“Don’t make me beg,” she moaned as the throb of her desire fully engulfed her.  
“Honestly, I’d like to see that,” he smiled wickedly as the pad of his thumb and forefinger trapped her nipple with a squeeze.

Felicity keened and arched into the sensation, her entire body wracked with a need that she would sell her soul to fulfil.

Her nipples had become like fire and his fingers like ice. Every light touch felt deliciously tormenting and every tweak felt like an orgasm in itself.

“And I’d like you to put your tongue to better use,” she ordered, much more forcefully than she had intended but the smile that peeked across Oliver’s lips told her he didn’t mind in the least.  
“Mouth on chest, fingers below belt?” Oliver offered as his terms.

Felicity considered his proposal as his index finger traced the outline of her areola, now a deep red-wine hue.  
“Okay, deal,” she hummed as her tongue stroked absent lines back and forth across her lower lip, “but don’t skimp on them Oliver, I know what you’re capable of.”

 

* * *

 

**{5:58am}**

“Oliver,” Felicity snapped, her upper body jolting upwards, despite the very prominent stomach she was spouting.  
Oliver rolled over in bed, yawning into the dark as he smoothed a palm down his wife’s arm.  
“Ssshh, it was just the cat,” he mumbled, his eyes still tightly closed.

Felicity stared down at him with blanketed look of confusion.  
“We don’t have a cat,” she quipped as she whacked his shoulder with the back of her palm.  
He groaned and rolled over.  
“Oliver, Fuck!” she cursed, pulling him back.  
“Really, you want to do that now?” he joked, slowly opening his eyes, “the last time wasn’t enough?”

“You must have a death wish Oliver Queen,” Felicity replied reaching for the lamp beside her.  
“And why is that?” Oliver replied, shielding his eyes as she flooded the bedroom with the orange light of her lamp.

“Because you’re sassing me,” she started, staring at her toes tenting under the covers.  
Oliver shrugged.  
“And my water just broke,” she finished.

Oliver laughed, flopping his head onto the pillow. She had pulled the same joke last week, only to wake him up just enough that he would go downstairs and make her a hot chocolate.

Felicity twisted her head, turning her deathly serious eyes onto his.  
“You’re not kidding this time are you?” he asked, suddenly aware of her pinched expression.

“No,” Felicity replied as she shook her head furiously.  
She could feel the liquid leaking between her legs and it was unlike anything she had experienced before nor could properly phrase into words.

And then it hit, like a wave that started tight across her stomach and stretched like fingers across her lower back. It made her buckle in the bed and squeeze her eyes closed as her body subconsciously focused everything towards this encompassing sweep over her body.

Then just as quickly as it had come, it subsided.  
“I think that was a contraction,” she whispered, her voice strained and thin.

She needed to move, the sudden urge to feel fiery hot water against her back was the only thing she could focus on right now. She threw back the covers of the bed and let out a sigh she had held captive without even realising it. The water was clear.

A second wave hit, but it seemed less intense this time and Felicity let it pass over her with not much more than gritted teeth and a few short pants.

“Where are you going?” Oliver asked as he watched Felicity carefully press her feet into the ground, as though she was unsure if they would before enough to keep her upright.  
“Shower,” she mumbled as she slid her feet across the ground, her fingers laced under her belly.  
“Do you want some help?”  
Felicity shook her head, she was well aware that very soon any dignity she once had would go flying at the window and for now she just wanted a few moments to prepare herself for that inevitability.

When they had found out she was pregnant Felicity cried for seven days straight, at times completely walling herself off from Oliver. It wasn’t that she didn’t want children, she did; and to see just how overjoyed Oliver was made her heart melt. But she still had clouds, dark ones, ones that blackened even the sunniest of days, and sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding that stick with the + sign on it, had rolled in the thunderstorms.

The darkness had not been something she had been expecting nor something she had prepared herself for, but it came with lightning and thunder and hailstones all the same.

She went from moments of terror that she wouldn’t know how to be a parent, to a crawling under her skin at the prospect that she would have to be vulnerable to someone during labour.

Oliver offered her his chest and his comforting arms, and when she was ready he went with her to counselling .

And all these months later _– it was time._

For twenty three minutes Felicity let the hot water cascade down her back until it ran tepid and then just a touch above cold. She thought about nothing, lucid in a state of acceptance that this was it.

She spoke to her swelling stomach in dulcet tones and soft whispers. She would meet them soon. She promised to look after them and she assured them that their daddy had the strongest arms in the world.

_If ever you need to jump little one, he’ll catch you._

The contractions had slowed momentarily, that or Felicity had been well enough distracted and soothed in the shower that she had not noticed them so predominantly, but when she stepped from the shower and sheathed her body behind the largest, softest towel she could find, they started up again.

She hadn’t expected the first and it buckled her knees and bent her in as much ‘half’ as she could be bent. Her arm shot away from her body as her hands sought out some sort of tenement. She found it in a bathroom shelf as the toiletries scattered around her fingers, a few dropping to the floor.

Felicity opened her mouth to mutter an instinctive curse word just as the full extent of the contraction took over her body and the noise that came out instead was a strangled cry.

Oliver burst through the door as though he had been pacing right outside it for the last twenty three minutes (which he absolutely had). He skidded to his knees to look up at her, towel tightly banded around her chest, body sunk into a 90 degree angle, knuckles white as she gripped the lip of a shelf and her face shrouded by dripping hair.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice panicked and his eyes blown wide.  
Felicity simultaneously shook and nodded her head until the contraction subsided and she found the ability to speak again.

“I think we need to go to the hospital,” she painted, her breath staggered.  
Oliver wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders as kissed a short, chaste kiss against her damp temple before he helped her to back into the bedroom.

Felicity climbed up on the bed just before another contraction rocked her body. Oliver rubbed heavy strokes down her back as his spare hand thumbed through the pregnancy book he had spent the last few months religiously studying.

“Felicity you’re missing a few steps here,” Oliver started as his eyes roved across the labouring page, “the book says...”  
Felicity caught his hand and squeezed it brutally and unrepentantly.  
“Oliver, why don’t you put your head between my legs and tell that to my vagina because,” she paused, her sentence hung in blank space as her body rode over another contraction, thick and fast this time, “... I don’t think it gives a fuck what the book says,” she finished.

“Okay, hospital,” Oliver spoke in stunted sentences.  
He leapt into action, throwing on an interesting concoction of jeans from the corner of the room and a black top that fit much more snuggly then he had anticipated.  
“Oliver...” Felicity rasped as she fisted the sheet, half of her wanting to scream, the other half wanting to laugh.  
“Your bag, I’ll get it,” he spoke scattered words as he struggled to pull the tee over his broad chest.  
Felicity shook her head before she finally had the breath to laugh, “that’s my tee shirt.”

Oliver looked down at _The Clash_ tee that was hideously distorted across his body. Felicity was absolutely right.  
“Shit,” he grumbled as he tugged off the shirt, though it put up quite the fight.

When it finally came free of his body he took a few extra seconds to stare at the next tee to ensure it was in fact his before he slipped on the navy Henley.

“Okay, let’s go,” he announced as he slapped his hands together, much more joltingly than he had intended.  
“I need to get dressed,” Felicity huffed, virtually breathless.  
She pointed a shaky finger at the dress she had hung, almost ominously, on the back of the bedroom door.

It was everything the midwife has instructed, comfortable and easily removable. Both had been factors in her clothing choices of the past but for _very_ different reasons.

Between halting contractions Felicity changed and pulled her hair back into the tidiest ponytail she could muster before Oliver hovered around her each step she took towards the stairs.  
“Do you want me to carry you?” Oliver asked as he stood like s barrier on the top stair.  
“I'm fine,” Felicity blustered, although if she was honest the stairs at this moment resembled a precarious cliff.

Oliver shadowed every step Felicity took, his arms braced inches from her and the look on his face showed just how ready he was to spring into action if required.

They paused on the porch as Felicity hunched over a nearby chair and cringed through an encompassing contraction before they finished the journey to the car.  
“Oliver, where is Madeline?” Felicity asked as she searched the empty backseat.

“Dammit,” Oliver bleated before he slipped out of the car and ran back into the house.  
He emerged a few minutes later with a half asleep Madeline slumped over his shoulder. He lowered her into the car and buckled her and finished with a touching kiss to her forehead as Felicity watched on, safe in the knowledge that Oliver would do anything for his children.  
_Including the one that was getting ready to arrive very soon._

“Text Thea from the hospital?” Felicity asked as she blew through a tightening that was now becoming instinctively familiar.  
“Yes,” Oliver nodded as he started the car, “I’ve phoned John, he’s going to meet us at the hospital to take Maddy.”  
Felicity nodded her head as they drove down the side streets.

The hospital was clear across town, at least a thirty-five minute drive away, but it was a straight drive on a freeway and after about ten minutes, as they sped up the onramp, Felicity felt an ease wash over her, _they would be there soon._

No sooner had the thought left her mind the car drove over the crest of a hill and was met with four lanes of complete standstill gridlock for as far ahead as they could see.

It was twenty minutes later and they had gone barely five miles when Oliver's phone rung. It was John.  
“Where are you guys?” John immediately asked when Oliver answered on speaker.  
“Traffic is barely moving on the freeway,” Oliver replied as he wrung his hands against the leather-wrapped steering wheel.  
“Hold on,” John said before there was an echoing of him asking Lyla to check the traffic report.  
“Oh shit,” John gaped as Oliver cringed at his decision to put him on speaker.  
It wasn’t the first swear word Maddy had heard and there was a high propensity that it wouldn’t be the last, but she had developed a rather _colourful_ vocabulary, likely due mostly to the years she spent with her mother, and Oliver and Felicity were attempting to counter that ... or at least not add to it.

“What is it?” Oliver grimaced before he offered Felicity a calming smile, or at the very least a good imitation of one.  
“It’s a huge accident Oliver, it’s standstill, you need to take the long way,” John warned.  
_The long way_ added thirty minutes to the journey but Oliver wasn’t left with any considerably better offers.  
“Alright, thanks man,” Oliver replied before saying a quick goodbye and ending the call.

“Little detour,” Oliver smiled as he eased the car into the exit lane.  
He looked over at Felicity who had gone silent and bone white. He gave the hand embedded in the edge of the seat a gently squeeze before he wrapped it back around the steering wheel.

The exit lane was crawling just a little faster but Oliver was happy to be moving at least.

“Oliver,” Felicity panted as the car rolled slowly down the concrete lane.  
“It’s okay baby, we got time, we’ll get there,” he cheered.

His optimism which Felicity ordinarily found endearing was one small hop away from infuriating.  
“Oliver,” she repeated, her pitch raising with a little more fervour.  
“Sssh, it’s okay, I got you, you’ll be fine,” he hummed.  
“Daddy I think you should listen,” Madeline yawned from the back seat as she slowly began to rouse.  
“Maddy, honey…” Oliver began, though he never got a chance to finish.  
“OLIVER! You need to find a closer hospital,” Felicity interrupted, a sudden franticness drenched her words.  
“It’s okay honey,” he offered kindly, though the trenched fear in her eyes was making him doubt his earlier assurance.  
“It’s not,” she panted, then snapped “find a closer hospital.”  
“Why?”  
He watched her snapped her lips closed and her entire body clench, before she looked at him with terrified eyes.  
“I’m pretty sure I can feel the baby’s head.”

Oliver waited for her to laugh.  
She didn’t.  
She wasn’t playing some cruel joke.

_Fuck_

Felicity gripped the grab handle above the window and lifted her body barely an inch above the seat.  
“There is a private Catholic one about five minutes from this exit,” Oliver blurted as he strained his neck to see the exit 50 car lengths away, “but I...”  
“Oliver,” Felicity yelped, “Get. Me. There.”  
Oliver nodded as he swerved the Cadillac into the shoulder and spun the wheels in the loose metal before speeding down it.

He sped down the exit and blew through a clear intersection despite his light being a definite red.

Five minutes later the car screeched to a halt outside the entrance of the private hospital.  
Oliver looked at Felicity and then back at the entrance.  
“Maddy block your ears,” Felicity instructed through staggered breaths.  
Madeline did the same without a word of complaint.  
“Oliver,” Felicity gritted as she clung to his arm, “you pay them whatever the fuck they need. If they want your soul you fucking give it to them okay?”

Oliver simply nodded. 

* * *

 

 

“They don’t know you’re Jewish,” Oliver leaned over and whispered in Felicity’s ear once they were alone and settled in the birthing suite.  
Felicity looked at Oliver with wide eyes and a gaped mouth.  
“You didn’t tell them?” she exclaimed, much louder than she had meant but she wasn’t exactly in control of her voice modulation.  
“I really didn’t think it appropriate,” Oliver cringed as he side-eyed the idols that littered the room.  
“Okay,” Felicity nodded, “I’ll try not to recite from the Tanakh while I’m giving birth.”  
She laughed at her own joke while Oliver took pause to see if she was actually serious, laughing only after she did.

A midwife walked cheerily into the room and floated around the foot of the bed. Felicity was just a little surprised she wasn’t in a habit.  
“I’m Sister Abigail, I’ll assist you with this gift from god,” she spoke with a sing-songy voice that Felicity might ordinarily find endearing – but today was anything but ordinary, “how are we?”  
“Peachy,” Felicity grimaced, taking a stilted breath as her nether regions felt like fire, “never felt better, this is fantastic.”  
Oliver gave her shoulder a light squeeze and she returned the gesture with a pinched brow.

“Your baby seems to have retracted a little so I’m going to take a little feel around there,” Abigail announced as she tugged on a rubber glove and pinged it against her wrist.

“What?” Felicity asked, trying to sit higher on her elbows to see over her protruding belly and tented legs.  
“Just see what I can feel,” she said with a wisped smile.  
“You’re really going to…. FUCK ME,” Felicity yelped as she felt the sudden intrusion below her waist  
Abigail stared most disapprovingly as Oliver bit his lips inward to stop from smile while he crossed his arms and balanced from one foot to the other.

“You’re labouring well,” Abigail noted as the hand came out just as abruptly as it had gone in.  
“Where are the drugs?” Felicity asked as she dropped her head back onto the pillow, it had only been an hour at the most but she was tired now.  
“I don’t think you need those,” the sing-song tone had returned, “your body will do the work.”  
Abigail didn’t wait for any sort of response before she swanned out of the room just as she had entered.  
Felicity looked up at Oliver with a face akin to that lifted from a horror movie.  
“Is she serious?”  
“The books do say….”  
Felicity cut him off with a blank stare.  
“I’ll go ask,” Oliver smiled, jutting a finger towards the door before he quickly left.

It was in the hallway just a few feet away that Oliver found Maddy engrossed in a conversation with a younger nurse who had sat down beside her on the grey vinyl chairs.

“Do Catholics celebrate Hanukkah? My mom is…”  
Oliver’s arms swept Maddy into an embrace so tight she blew out air from her lungs instead of words.  
“She’s learning about all the different religions at pre-school,” Oliver smiled as he plopped her back on the chair and patted her head and did the sign of the cross over his chest.

Honestly, it probably would not made one iota of difference, these people were professionals and they wouldn’t turf a labouring woman out of the hospital based on her religious heritage, but it was an omission Oliver had started and was now having to protect.

The vibration of his cell phone in his pocket was a thankful distraction and he exhaled a heavy sigh of relief when he read the message from John.  
_We’re outside._

He grabbed Maddy’s hand and walked like a bat out of hell… _a poor expression given his surroundings_ …towards the front door.  
“Do they know Felicity is…” John started to ask as he met Oliver in the foyer  
“Nope,” Oliver replied bluntly as he folded Maddy’s hand into John’s.  
“There’s a diner across the road kiddo, how about some breakfast?” Lyla asked as she bent down to Madeline’s eye level.  
“Will mom be okay?” the little girl asked, her eyes wet with unshed tears as she looked up at Oliver.  
She was old enough to hear and see what was happening, but too young to _understand_ it.

Oliver crouched down in front of the little girl and brushed back hair from her cherub face.  
“She’s going to be just fine and in a little while you’ll have a little baby brother or baby sister to see, okay?”  
Madeline wiped her wrist under her nose as she nodded.  
“I’ll bring him back some pancakes,” Madeline decided with a single resolute nod of her head.

* * *

  
Oliver skidded back into the room, afraid that if he left Felicity for much longer than a few minutes he might come back to her cradling a newborn in her hands and he wasn’t going to miss this for the world.

Thankfully she was just as he’d left her, although now teetering on the edge of the bed.  
“You want to walk around?” Oliver asked as he walked quickly to put his hand under her elbow to steady her.  
“I want to leave,” she declared.  
“You can’t honey,” Oliver smiled, talking with a soothing voice.

She gripped the bed as another surging contraction rolled down her body.  
“I’ll close my legs,” she finally spoke in a rushed sentence.  
Oliver helped her back onto the bed and kissed her temple, “I don’t think it works that way.”

“Oliver,” she hushed, looking around the room just to ensure they were alone, “the nurses here probably haven’t even had sex, or _fucked_ ” she whispered the last two words like a well-guarded secret.

“I’m trusting my vagina, _your vagina_ , to women who aren’t even sure how it works,” she panicked, “what if they break it?”

Felicity widened her eyes as she played the last words over in her mind.  
“Oliver what if they _fucking_ break it?” she blurted.  
“Language,” Oliver cringed as his mind ticked up nightmares of them actually being turfed out of the hospital.

“The fuck?” Felicity snorted, the first jovial moment Oliver had seen since they got there.  
Abigail came back with the same smile bled across her lips  
“Honey,” Oliver spoke through a barely opened mouth, “maybe less swearing.”

Abigail looked from one to the other, smile still locked on her lips, as she placed her hands in another set of gloves. Oliver smiled, undoubtedly like he was hiding something – which he supposed he actually _was_ – as he did the sign of the cross over his chest one again.

“I’m sorry Oliver, is a baby the size of a watermelon coming out of your co..?”  
Oliver’s lips pressed firmly against Felicity’s to mute the last word, but the instant he tasted her he was caught up, forgetting everything about the present as he focused in on the softness of her lips and the taste of the same while his tongue lightly dragged back and forth across her lower lip, humming in delight.

She wasn’t mad, not even a little, as she keened into the kiss. His supple lips countered with the delicious friction of his unshaven chin instantly stole her from the moment and placed her smack bang in the middle of something mind-altering euphoric.

“Felicity,” Abigail announced, dragging the two of them abruptly back to the moment, “it’s time to push.”  
“No, no it’s not,” Felicity retorted as she shook her head.  
“Mrs Queen.”  
Oliver smiled, _finally something they actually didn’t have to lie about._  
“It’s time to push,” Abigail repeated.  
Felicity looked up at Oliver who wordless folded his fingers into hers.

“You jump and I’ll always be here to catch you princess,” he whispered into her ear, his words were only for her.

Her hand turned white in his hand as her eyes squeezed tightly closed and a silent scream left her lips. The moments took her entire body and focused them.

Noise became echoed and her eyes saw in hazed lights.  
Push.  
Breathe.  
Focus.  
Push.

And then lightness.  
Absolutely, complete _lightness_.

Noise flooded her ears.  
Colours became vivid.

And then the faintest little sound.  
A tiny cry.

“Congratulations, he's perfect,” Abigail simpered with a smile.  
“He?” Felicity sniffed, her cheeks a river of tears and perspiration, “it’s a boy? And he’s Okay?”  
“A beautiful little boy, and he’s perfect.”  
Felicity buried her head into her palms and sobbed happily.

 _He was perfect._  
“Would you like to cut the cord Mr Queen?”  
Oliver finally blinked.  
He had a son.

He looked down at Felicity who raised her head just enough out of her palms to nod her answer to a question he didn’t need to ask.

“Do you have a name?” Abigail asked as she positioned Oliver to cut the cord.  
“No,” Oliver replied with a quivered voice before he brushed back a tear.  
“Jackson,” Felicity offered.  
Oliver smiled as more tears fell unfettered. He knew exactly what she meant.

 _Jacksonville, Florida._  
_The place he found her._  
_The place they found each other._

It was perfect.

* * *

  
“I can’t believe he’s ours Oliver,” Felicity gushed as she held the sleeping and tightly swaddled baby boy in her arms, “Jackson Oliver Queen.”  
She loved the way that sounded and even more how Oliver sighed so contentedly beside her when she said it.

“You were amazing,” Oliver kissed the words into her temple.  
“We made him,” Felicity smiled, her eyes locked on the way his lips rolled over each other as he slept, “completely by accident, but I don’t suppose he needs to know that,” she laughed softly, careful not to jostle him awake.

“You up for visitors?” Oliver asked as he instinctive combed his fingers through her hair before stroking lightly hesitant lines over the top of Jackson's swaddle.  
Felicity nodded and hummed softly.

Oliver stepped away, instantly missing them, before he turned and walked towards the door. His little caught the edge of her bed, cracking in sharply.

“Fuck,” he cursed as he hopped on one foot.  
“Oliver,” Felicity smirked, “watch your language.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Google maps is MVP, please excuse any errors.
> 
> Thanks for reading. As always, I'm open to hear anything you have to offer.
> 
> My slight OCD demands I reply to every comment so that's fun too....


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